No more Teddy bare Covered up at museum
Teddy Roosevelt has gone undercover.
A statue of the nation’s 26th president that has stood on the front steps of the American Museum of Natural History since 1939 is now blocked from view.
The statue, which has been criticized for glorifying colonialism, is being sent to North Dakota on a long-term loan to the under-development Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
Now, two weeks after the move was announced, the statue is already completely hidden from view, covered by scaffolding and a tarp, photos by The Post show.
The removal, being carried out by the museum with help from the city, is expected to take “several months” to complete, officials said when announcing the deal.
The library, set to open in Medora, ND, in 2026, conceded that the statue “is problematic in its composition,” with Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by an African man and a Native American man.
Its prominence at the front of the tourist destination on Central Park West also “denies passersby consent and context,” the library said last month as it announced its deal with the museum and city.
The library will initially put the monument in storage as it considers how to best use it to teach about troubling aspects of US history, with black and indigenous community leaders invited to participate on an advisory panel.
“Museums are supposed to do hard things,” the library foundation’s chief executive, Edward F. O’Keefe, said in a statement.
“It is said that ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,’ and our job is to forthrightly examine history to understand the present and make a better future.”
Opposition to the statue escalated in recent years, especially after the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
In June 2020, officials at the museum — which is privately run but sits on public land — proposed removing the statue amid a nationwide movement to remove public works honoring Confederate leaders.
The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously later that month to have it relocated.
One of the former president’s descendants, Theodore Roosevelt V, has supported removing the statue, which he described as “problematic in its hierarchical depiction of its subjects.”
“Rather than burying a troubling work of art, we ought to learn from it,” the investment banker and conservationist, 79, said.
“It is fitting that the statue is being relocated to a place where its composition can be recontextualized to facilitate difficult, complex and inclusive discussions.”