AMERICAN GRAFFITI
Columbus vandalized after Blasio crusade
A Columbus statue in Central Park was defaced yesterday, days after Mayor de Blasio appointed a group to review “oppressive” monuments.
A vandal painted “blood” on the hands of a Christopher Columbus statue in Central Park — just days after Mayor de Blasio appointed a commission to review potentially offensive Big Apple monuments.
“Hate will not be tolerated” was scrawled in white spray paint on the pedestal of the 7-foot bronze statue, along with an apparent threat reading, “#somethings-coming.”
A Central Park Conservancy worker noticed the desecration near East 66th Street at about 7 a.m. Tuesday and called cops.
De Blasio on Friday named a diverse group of 18 artists, historians and other professionals to “develop guidelines on how the city should address monuments seen as oppressive and inconsistent with the values of New York City,” his office said.
The review followed the deadly white-supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va., over the removal of a statue of Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito urged that the 76foot-tall structure honoring Columbus at Columbus Circle be considered for removal.
It stands about a half-mile from the one in Central Park, a 125-yearold work by Spanish artist Jeronimo Suñol.
Philip Foglia, founding director of the Italian-American Legal Defense and Higher Education Fund, described the vandalism as a “hate crime” and demanded that de Blasio disband his commission.
“The controversy that’s been created about the statue by this mayoral commission has created a toxic environment,” Foglia said. “It was a huge mistake.
“The commission that was created to assist with diversity and combat hate has created an environment where you have hate and ethnic division. Columbus was an American icon before he was an Italian-American icon.”
Foglia also called on Mark-Viverito to “apologize” to Italian-Americans.
The vandalism discovered Tuesday included paper signage plastered to the pedestal that read, “Save your soul,” along with a repeat of the “#somethingscoming” hashtag.
No arrests have been made and cops do not have surveillance footage that shows the perpetrator in ther act.
It took Parks Department workers more than two hours to scrub the graffiti and remove the red paint using cleaning solvents and acetone.
“Vandalizing and defacing public property is unacceptable,” said Mark-Viverito spokesman Robin Levine. “[It] does nothing to facilitate necessary conversations about New York City’s historical monuments.”
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said of the incident that the mayor “thinks vandalism is wrong and never the right approach to these conversations or monuments.
“There’s an important place for public dialogue on this issue and that’s why the mayor’s put together a panel of experts to thoughtfully and efficiently organize that process. Vandalism isn’t the answer,” Phillips said.
The park’s Columbus statue, financed by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society for the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s 1492 voyage, was dedicated on May 12, 1892.
It is a modified version of Suñol’s 1885 Columbus monument, installed at the Plaza de Colón in Madrid. Additional reporting by Daniel Prendergast