Museum curator’s tweets on best way to destroy statues
A MUSEUM curator is being investigated by police after tweeting details about how to destroy ‘racist’ statues using household items.
Oxford- educated Madeline Odent posted a series of messages to her 5,000 followers in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
She wrote how irreversible damage could be caused to bronze with certain common goods found in every house.
Her comments angered critics who called for her to be sacked from her taxpayer-funded job.
Mrs Odent, the curator at Royston and Dictrict Museum in Hertfordshire, said: ‘From an art conservation perspective, it’s honestly fine to throw paint on memorials of genocidal racists! Paint is pretty easy to clean off.
‘What would be an absolute shame is if people threw certain household items that cause irreversible bronze disease. Of course then the artefact can’t really be on display, which is a shame.
‘Because, like, if somebody were to throw a ton of tomatoes at a bust of a genocidal racist, nobody would probably notice the chemical reaction until it was too late to save the artefact. And this isn’t a “pretty” deterioration either.
‘The metal starts flaking off in the gross white fungus type thing – you’ve seen coins dug up in a garden? Like that.’
She went on: ‘Once the damage is done, it can be paused or stopped but can’t be reversed.
‘In 150 years, we haven’t found a way to restore artefacts that this happens to.’ The thread on Tuesday ended with a picture of a monument to Winston Churchill daubed with the words ‘was a racist’.
Some critics accused her of promoting vandalism.
One posted a message to the town council: ‘Your museum manager appears to be very clearly inciting the criminal damage of monuments and statues with detailed instructions on how to accomplish it.’
Rupert Margate added: ‘We are so disgusted about the destructive tweets from your curator Madeline Odent.
‘We thought she would be a suitable guardian of British artefacts.’ Dr Barry Allen said: ‘Fire Madeline Odent now. She is inciting chemical attacks on
‘Inciting vandalism’
public soil.’ Others ‘liked’ her posts – although she has now locked the account, which features a prominent photo of a Black Lives Matter banner.
American-born Mrs Odent, who holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford University and is married to banker Pascal Odent, took up her museum role in 2018 after working as a freelance researcher.
She declined to discuss the matter yesterday, saying: ‘I have been instructed to give no comment.’ And she taunted critics online, writing: ‘ a) my boss thinks I’m funny, b) she also supports BLM, and c) I’m the one reading [your messages of complaint].’
She also claimed to have negotiated a contract that allowed her to ‘decolonise’ the museum and that her boss had given her a platform where she could ‘p*** off some racists’.
In February she arranged a ‘Drag Queen Story Time’ event, although it was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Mrs Odent comes from an affluent academic family in Georgia, US, and went to a private boarding school.
She graduated with a BA in history from private Stetson University in Florida in 2014 before taking an MPhil in modern British history at Oriel College, Oxford.
She married Pascal in 2017, holding two lavish ceremonies.
One was in an English country house, the other at private liberal arts institution Berry College in her home state, where her father, personality psychologist Dr Stephen Briggs, is president.
Hertfordshire Police confirmed they were looking into her comments, saying: ‘We are aware of a series of tweets on a private twitter account, which we believe may relate to damaging statues.
‘We are currently looking into this matter along with our partner agencies.’
Royston Town Council said: ‘We have been made aware of tweets on a private Twitter account and are currently investigating the issue. The town council does not endorse the comments or views.’