Al Letson here, host of Reveal and More To The Story.
I grew up in the South, surrounded by public buildings and statues named after Confederate soldiers. But in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020, when people began calling for some of those statues to be removed, I realized the pendulum might be swinging in a direction I could recognize.
My guest this week is Erin Thompson. She is a professor of art crime (the only one in America, it turns out) who wrote Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments. Erin explains that throughout history, people have built idols for those in power, only to tear them down when the political climate changed or public opinion shifted. (In fact, in Roman times, people would just chisel a face off a statue and reuse it!) It helped me realize that what had happened in places like Richmond, Virginia, where protesters painted statues and demanded their removal, has occurred repeatedly throughout history.
I also got a chance to talk with Erin about President Donald Trump’s aesthetic choices and how, to him, gold—so much gold—represents power and wealth. Erin looks back at similarly extravagant behavior in history, including when French kings built the sprawling, ornate Palace of Versailles. Hundreds of years later, have we learned any lessons from the doomed French royalty? I hope you’ll tune in to this week’s More To The Story to find out.
—Al Letson
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