Statues of Christopher Columbus removed from Grant and Arrigo parks in 2020 would be returned to their pedestals under a City Council order proposed Wednesday to counter what its sponsor calls “selective censorship of public art.”
Italian American Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) is calling Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Clinee Hedspeth on her refusal to remove from the city-owned Cultural Center a puppet display titled “U.S.-Israel War Machine.” Some Council members called it antisemitic, and a City Council majority voted in favor of its removal.
Hedspeth has said art is designed to stir emotion and should never be censored by government, even if some people don’t like it or find it offensive.
She made that clear during a stormy Council hearing this month that culminated in the removal of progressive Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) after he was accused of calling colleague Bill Conway (34th) a “white supremacist.”
The order introduced by Napolitano at Wednesday’s City Council meeting is aimed at holding Hedspeth to that standard.
It would direct Hedspeth to “take all necessary acts to cause the reinstallation of all statues, monument or public artwork removed by the Chicago Monuments Project to previous locations within 60 days.”
“Selective censorship of public art like the Christopher Columbus Statue is an affront to the very (principles) of freedom of speech that make this city great,” Napolitano was quoted as saying in a news release. “We cannot allow the erasure of our history simply because it makes some uncomfortable.”
Hedspeth could not be reached for comment.
During the committee hearing this month, Hedspeth defended the provocative, and some say offensive, puppet display at the Cultural Center and made it clear she would resist any effort to “bully” or “silence” the artists who created it.
Mayor Brandon Johnson supported that view.
“I’ve seen very provocative artwork that depicts slavery. I’ve seen artwork where a noose with the colors of the American flag were gripped around a Black man. Very provocative,” Johnson said on the day of that hearing.
“It’s important — particularly at a time when history and culture is being threatened and undermined — that we don’t find ourselves exacerbating the attempt to silence the voices of individuals that speak their truth through their lived experiences. … To have any discourse shut down is something that we should be very wary of.”
Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, applauded Napolitano, saying returning the statues would end what he views as years of discrimination against Italian Americans.
“This hasn’t been about Columbus. This hasn’t been about Native Americans. This has been about free speech, about the mayor just flippantly taking down a statue at 2 in the morning without communicating with the community. It’s about the way that it was done,” Onesti said.
If, as Hedspeth rightfully claims, artistic expression must be protected at all costs, “the Columbus statues must go back,” Onesti said.
“You want to talk about racism? You want to talk about inclusion? That’s racism 101 to be selective about what you protect and what you don’t,” he said.
But some who have protested the statues’ potential return say celebrating Columbus is an affront to the Indigenous peoples oppressed by the waves of European colonists who followed Columbus’ arrival. Chicago Public Schools now celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day.
In July 2020, as Chicago reeled from civil unrest and looting after the murder of George Floyd, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered two Columbus statues “temporarily” removed.
At the same time, Lightfoot argued, statues of Columbus in Grant and Arrigo parks — statues vandalized repeatedly since Floyd’s killing — should not be torn down, but rather used to confront the nation’s history and trigger a long-overdue “reckoning.”
City Hall then launched the Chicago Monuments Project and created an advisory committee to review more than 500 Chicago statues and monuments. The commission subsequently pinpointed 41 statues it deemed problematic, including statues of four presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley.
Lightfoot promised to return the Columbus statues to their pedestals in Grant Park and Arrigo Park but never did. She left office without acting on the monuments commission’s recommendations.
Johnson has stopped short of calling for the monuments deemed racist by the commission to be removed, saying it would be up to the people of Chicago to “provide that direction.”
Onesti’s committee has repeatedly demanded that statues of Christopher Columbus be returned to Grant and Arrigo parks and protected at city expense. The committee even hired a national security firm to make recommendations on protecting the statues. Those recommendations ranged from cameras, motion detectors and 24-hour guards to “plexiglass encasement” and “coatings” on the statues to ease cleanup.
With regard to the Columbus statue in Grant Park, the report suggested barriers to keep the public farther away. There was also a proposal to install plaques to “tell the story of the Native American experience” with fencing surrounding a “big Native American Garden.”
Three years ago, attorneys for the city and the Joint Civic Committee started talking about ways to secure the Columbus statues using the committee’s report as a starting point for those discussions.
But Onesti said then that Italian Americans were “very hurt, very furious” that Lightfoot ignored the demand to return the Columbus statues to their pedestals in time for the 2022 celebration of the Columbus Day holiday that his community holds dear.