A 1959 statue of

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus * lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo * es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón * pt, Cristóvão Colombo * ca, Cristòfor (or ) * la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...

by Alfred Solani was installed on the

Columbus State Community College Columbus State Community College (CSCC) is a public community college in Columbus, Ohio. Founded as Columbus Area Technician's School in 1963, it was renamed Columbus Technical Institute in 1965 and was renamed again to its current name in 198 ...

's downtown campus in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and ...

, United States. The monument is one of three in Columbus commemorating the explorer. The statue was removed June 19, 2020.

Description

The marble statue is tall. It originally was created with a flat head, rounded out by Columbus-based sculptor

Alfred Tibor Alfred Tibor (February 10, 1920 – March 18, 2017) was a Holocaust survivor and sculptor. His artwork can be found in nearly 500 private collections and museums throughout the world, including the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. Life Tibor w ...

in his 1987 restoration.

History

The statue was created in 1959, commissioned by Anthony De Tomasi. It was offered to the city of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, which declined the gift. In 1966, De Tomasi installed the sculpture in a park he was developing in

Barrington, Illinois Barrington is a village in Cook County and Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 10,722 at the 2020 census. A northwest suburb of Chicago, the area features wetlands, forest preserves, parks, and horse trails in a country- ...

, a suburb of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. After several decades there, it fell into disrepair, including one of its eyes shot out. The statue was moved to Columbus in 1986, in three pieces in a Columbus Parks and Recreation office. It was restored by Tibor in 1987 and donated to the college one year later, installed in May 1988. The 2020 George Floyd protests in Columbus created calls to remove the statue, with petitions circulating to also remove other statues of the explorer and to rename the city. The college stated it was looking into removing the statue, and it may be the first to be removed out of the three in the city. On June 16, the school administration announced it will remove and store the statue, and will aim to place a different work of art on the statue's pedestal. The family of the sculptor stated that they are against its removal. Columbus City Council President Pro Tem Elizabeth Brown supported the statue's removal, stating that City Hall's must be next. The statue was vandalized in mid-June, 2020. Hours after the statue's removal was announced, it was vandalized again, with spray-painted "America's first Atlantic slaver".

References

{{Public art in Columbus, Ohio 1959 sculptures Marble sculptures in the United States Monuments and memorials in Ohio Monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests Monuments and memorials to Christopher Columbus Outdoor sculptures in Columbus, Ohio Relocated buildings and structures in Ohio Sculptures of men in Ohio Statues in Columbus, Ohio

Vandalized works of art in Ohio Statues removed in 2020

Description

History

See also

References