As I was waking up Tuesday Morning, I tuned in to NPR and overheard a story about a place which fascinated me in Moscow.
It was known commonly as Sculpture Park and adjoined the New Tretyakov Museum which sprung up not long after Perestroika began. It was essentially a graveyard for the cast-off sculptures of former Soviet leaders, like Lenin and Brezhnev.
Of particular interest is the statue of Stalin (a full figure of the dictator carved from pink granite which lost its nose when it was toppled to the ground from its pedestal). Behind it, however, is a new piece — a wall of caged faces, an original work by Yevgeny Chubarov, representing the victims of Stalin’s purges. On my first visit, I was unaware of the juxtaposed commentary, and I let out a gasp of genuine surprise as I drew near enough to realize what these stones represented.
Perhaps a compelling solution for our current dilemma with Confederate monuments? — relocate them and, in their new setting, give them some artistic or historical context.
Here is a link to the Morning Edition report, “What To Do With Toppled Statues? Russia Has A Fallen Monument Park” by Lucien Kim.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/21/892914684/what-to-do-with-toppled-statues-russia-has-a-fallen-monument-park
To one and all
Be Safe-Stay Healthy