Iconoclasm in the Public Square

Examines the discordance among the public over controversial historic monumentsand how it should be addressed, highlighting how iconoclasm is confronted through global heritage management theory.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the United States and Canada rarely experienced iconoclasm, the premeditated destruction of visual symbols, because of their specific emotional or ideological content in the public square. This is changing. As North Americans continue to reject the tangible and intangible heritage of institutionalized white supremacy, iconoclasm acts are happening with greater frequency. The death of George Floyd in May 2020 hastened the demand by Americans to remove historic monuments; so much so, that protesters took matters into their own hands and pulled down statues of historical figures, not limited to the American Civil War but also associated with European colonialism before the American Revolution and during the reign of Queen Victoria in Canada. 

For historic preservationists and conservationists, iconoclasm is now the most consequential issue in the field and will continue to be a matter of contention for the foreseeable future. Motives for enacting iconoclasm can be justified, but what are the consequences for doing so, and how, in turn, will this determine the future of our public spaces in towns and cities? More fundamentally, is the current period of iconoclasm leading us to reconsider the public square as part of the built environment? This book will be the first theory-informed work to examine the discordance among the public over controversial historic monuments in the historic landscape and how it should be addressed. It challenges architects, landscape architects, conservationists, preservationists, elected officials, and the public to reconsider the public square and whether or not civic art that memorializes is still relevant or a practice that can be reimagined. It also considers the after-effects of iconoclasm acts: How should we redesign public civic spaces after we have either destroyed or removed historic monuments? As societal values change in regard to public memorialization, how will heritage practitioners, conservationist technicians, and urban designers grapple with working in the civic realm, which may be considered antiquated but continues to exist in our cities?

The book examines how iconoclasm is confronted through global heritage management theory. During the second half of the twentieth century, UNESCO and the European Union drafted charters to protect historic monuments from acts of war and degradation. The author considers these sets of principles and other international approaches to contested and conflicted heritage in addressing racism-based heritage that is embedded in North American heritage, from theoretical, architectural, and legal perspectives. France, which first experienced iconoclasm during the Revolution, has grappled with iconoclasm throughout its modern history. Revolutionary leader Henri Grégoire even invented a noun for it: “vandalism.” Through the creation of an environment removed from a historic object’s context—the public museum, the Louvre—France conceived institutional iconoclasm. From the revolutions and cultural upheavals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the calamities of two world wars in the twentieth century, Europeans have developed policy and a legal framework that address iconoclasm. The book intends to examine this legal framework closely. It will inform the direction that the North American heritage field should take in order to accept that heritage changes, and must change, in response to our own needs to acknowledge multiple histories and identities in a diverse society, while simultaneously recognizing that iconoclasm is a part of how a society resolves its emotional responses to its built heritage.