Smashing Into a New World: Iconoclasm Through the Ages

Iconoclasm is all the rage. Majority-black Memphis just removed statues of two of the most odious figures in American history: the founders of the Confederacy (Jefferson Davis) and Ku Klux Klan (Nathan Bedford Forrest). A statue of Theodore Roosevelt at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History was accused of exerting “dominance and superiority” over figures of Native American and African attendants and vandalized, though it was allowed to remain after a commission reviewed “symbols of hate.” As the woke extend ever more scrutiny to historical figures, heritage groups (including some white nationalists) claim that statue removal is an assault on their identity.

Elites always erect monuments to signal what their inferiors should venerate, and new regimes always order the demolition of the old. At New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, artworks on display illustrate iconoclasm across the millennia—and show that you can’t escape the past forever, even when you physically destroy it.

Click the first thumbnail below to begin a guided tour of iconoclasm, past and present.

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