Charlottesville Turns 2017 Robert E. Lee Statue Bronze Into New Public Art
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · May 23
Charlottesville Turns 2017 Robert E. Lee Statue Bronze Into New Public Art
12 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · May 23
Bronze ingots from Charlottesville’s former Robert E. Lee statue will be used in a new public artwork, repurposing metal from a monument once at the center of national unrest.
The city removed the statue after the 2017 white supremacist rally that erupted around it, and community organizers later melted it down so it could not be reinstalled.
That left organizers with a new question: how to use the remaining bronze in a way that fit Charlottesville’s effort to move beyond the Confederate monument’s legacy.
The decision turns material from a flashpoint of violence into a civic art project, extending the city’s long-running reckoning with the monument and the events it helped symbolize.
Can bronze from a controversial statue be recast into a symbol that truly unifies a community?
Beyond Charlottesville, what is the ultimate fate of America's other controversial public monuments?