KINGSTON TIME FOR A CHANGE?
Removing statues from Academy Green Park would be ‘small but not insignificant step,’ leader of effort says
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Frances Cathryn stood with others at Academy Green Park during a recent Saturday protest against racial injustice.
The 32-year-old Midtown Kingston resident, who has worked in museums specializing in art and history, took note of the towering statues of three historical figures: Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland; George Clinton, New York’s first governor and vice president under two presidents; and explorer
Henry Hudson. The statues have stood at the west end of the triangular park since 1950.
“What struck me is how high they rose up over this crowd of people who were calling for basic human rights,” Cathryn said in an interview.
Cathryn is spearheading an online petition (bit.ly/3statues) to have the statues removed on the grounds that Clinton was a slaveholder, Stuyvesant was an anti-Semite, and Hudson colonized territories for the Dutch East India Co. More than 3,600 people had signed the petition as of midday Sunday.
“My message to people is
that we can have better imagination when it comes to our public space and do better than these three men,” Cathryn said.
Cathryn, a Wisconsin native who has lived in Kingston for a few months, is the founder of the Kingston Monument Project. She said the three statues “are symbols of power.”
“These men represent a history of enslavement, colonization, discrimination in New York,” she said. “... To keep them (the statues) here is a way to maintain those structures of power that were forged when the state was settled.”
Cathryn said by removing the statues, “Kingston can take one small but not insignificant step toward reclaiming its historical landscape and rectifying harms against communities that have been made invisible since the city’s settlement.”
The park, bounded by Albany and Clinton avenues and Maiden Lane, is owned by the Academy Green Association but is managed by the city. It is the former site of Kingston Academy, a precursor of Kingston High School.
“My interest in all of this was to use my position as a museum worker to educate the public about the statues and who we honor in public spaces,” Cathryn said, “as well as to get the community to think critically about who we design public spaces to serve.” The push to have the statues taken down comes amid a growing nationwide movement to remove monuments to Confederate figures of the Civil War era. The movement has grown in recent months amid protests arising from the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
Academy Green Park has been the site of several Black Lives Matter rallies since Floyd’s death on May 25.
Cathryn said her museum experience has made her keenly aware of symbolism emanating from works of art.
“I care about public art, and I also care about the stories we pass on to one another,” she said, adding that open-air art, like that in the Kingston park, is a “reflection ... of our values.”
Cathryn said she wants to create a public dialogue about who is harmed by the statues’ symbolism.
“I think that people really have to put some of their own feelings aside and understand who is really being hurt here,” she said.
“I really need key folks in the community to take on this project and challenge the political and historical establishment,” she added. “I really want to encourage people to radically rethink what we consider ‘monuments’ to be.
“What better way to honor the community’s history than to improve lives now,” Cathryn said.
The “Kingston Monument Project” Facebook group is at bit.ly/fb-monuments.