by Patricia N. Saffran

The Monuments Exhibition in Los Angeles, co-presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and the Brick, features historic Confederate Beaux Arts statues splashed with paint and graffiti, along with contemporary art based on a theme of satirizing the South. Most notably, the exhibition displays the once-magnificent historic Charles Keck equestrian statue of Stonewall Jackson after it had been dismembered and reassembled in grotesque form.

I attempted to pose questions to the presidents of some of the world-famous foundations that financed the exhibit. The foundation presidents refused to answer any questions. Transparency among foundation officials doesn’t exist.

Those questioned include representatives for Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation, John Silbeman, President of the Teiger Foundation, and Joel Wachs, President of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, also Treasurer of the Teiger Foundation and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. 

The following questions were directed in particular to the Mellon Foundation:

1. Does the Mellon Foundation approve of Charles Keck’s Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson being destroyed to make a contemporary sculpture by Kara Walker? I read what Kara wrote about her “research” into Jackson and, apparently, she didn’t know that he taught black children to read and write. In a zoom call recently with HK Edgerton, former vp NAACP GA who has unfortunately since passed away, he said, “Jackson was a friend to the black man.” 

2. Do you approve of sculptor Kara Walker making a deliberate mashup of Jackson but also including his horse Little Sorrel because she surmised that there was a cult about Little Sorrel after Jackson died which she apparently didn’t like. People used to surround the horse trying to clip a piece of his mane or tail. During his campaigns, Jackson used to fall asleep on Little Sorrel and the horse, a Morgan, was so intelligent that he kept on the trail regardless. 

3. Would your original namesake, Paul Mellon, have approved of LA’s Monuments destroying Keck’s Jackson as it was considered one of the finest equestrian statues in the world? I seriously doubt he would have approved, as he was a Thoroughbred breeder, and art collector who donated many pieces to the National Gallery and to Yale. I’d like to know how you reconcile your donation with Mellon history to this destruction.

4. Finally, would The Mellon Foundation continue to fund future exhibitions that destroy Beaux Arts and historic statues? It should be noted that many people wanted to take the Keck Jackson equestrian statue to preserve it, as well as the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation.

It should be noted that the Mellon Foundation has a $500 million project, Monuments, to help communities research and commemorate history. With such a large amount directed toward historical research, the foundation should have been more circumspect about donating to LA with its inaccurate view of Jackson, and Southern history.

As to the Andy Warhol Foundation, they promote, “risk taking” and “freedom of expression” but nowhere do they say they condone desecrating and destroying other artists’ works of art, as they just did by donating to LA. There also appears to be no quote from Andy endorsing destroying great historic works of art. The trustees seem to have made up this new precept. 

At the Teiger Foundation they seek to advance “experimentation” in the arts as well as supporting “racial justice” against “white supremacy.” They don’t say they promote actively destroying Beaux Arts statues, which they also just did with their donation to LA. To explain further, the LA’s Monuments press releases ramble on about “white supremacy” too but fail to provide accurate examples of historic or current events, which are cursorily researched today.

It’s not just the autocratic foundations that are driving historic statue destruction. Local governors, mayors and city councils are helping as well. The Charlottesville City Council left the public out when they made the decisions about what would happen to the removed statutes in December 2021. They decided to give the Shrady/Lentelli Lee to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to be melted down, and Keck’s Jackson to the LA museums, its purpose unknown other than the guarantee it would no longer be displayed as an object of veneration. Ironically, Kara Walker, with her Jackson mashup, Unmanned Drone, did create an object of veneration, for the cult followers of violent modern art. In her “renaming” of Jackson to “Unmanned Drone”, she has morphed a unique individual human and horse into a piece of technology, devoid of beauty and spirituality.

To sum up about today’s chartable foundations, they may once have been wonderful institutions that served many people. Unfortunately, today they have become conduits for their current trustees and presidents to forward their own agendas which may be contrary to the very history and original altruistic purpose of the foundations. 

Patricia Saffran is a New York-based preservationist and writer.