Monumental Error
Will New York City finally tear down a statue?

http://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/monumental-error/
Publisher:  Harper's Magazine
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article

An examination of the Sims controversy in New York City, where authorities have long debated the removal of a statue in Central Park celebrtating 19th-century doctor J. Marion Sims, the 'father of gynecology' who experimented on black women.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In 1899, the art critic Layton Crippen complained in the New York Times that private donors and committees had been permitted to run amok, erecting all across the city a large number of "painfully ugly monuments." The very worst statues had been dumped in Central Park. "The sculptures go as far toward spoiling the Park as it is possible to spoil it," he wrote. Even worse, he lamented, no organization had "power of removal" to correct the damage that was being done.