A statue of a slaver is less historically valuable if it doesn’t carry the additional story of being defaced in 2020.
Museums tell stories using carefully curated groups of objects. Why the object was made and the life it lived are two of the main aspects of the story. This statue, defaced or not, would be used in a museum to tell a story about racism and/or slavery. Defacing the statue adds more interest, prompts more thought, says more about what the public think about its country’s racist past. If I were curating a museum I’d be much more likely to want to use the statue in an exhibition now.
Without being defaced in 2020, the statue tells a story of a country that at one point honoured men who got rich off slavery. It says very little about slavery being outlawed and without any damage suggests people continued to respect slavers for many years afterward. With the addition of spray paint and damage from 2020, we now know that the statue and everything it stands for was rejected by the people. The statue now says that for many years the statue stood, until one day enough people were sick of it and tore it down. It’s a story of how a man went from revered to despised, whilst remaining the objectively the same.
Without the damage, you’d breeze right past a statue of a slaver in a museum. It’s boring, it’s not an object you stop and admire for long. Paint is bright and eye-catching, but also you’d stop longer to admire the work done by those who stand up to racism. You stop and think not just of those who would build a statue to a racist, but those who would tear it down. The statue now has two stories, instead of one. And the new story is now much more empowering.
A statue that gets defaced has been reclaimed by the people oppressed by its subject. This statue is no longer honouring a white man, its dishonouring him now. It also tells of the brave people who would protest it, who would tear it down. It’s no longer all about a slaver, it’s a monument to the BLM movement too. Black people and allies will want to see this in a museum. Only now will this object turn a crowd.
2020 has been a landmark historic year, and any 2020 alterations to a statue make the story it tells about racism all the richer.