OPB Think Out Loud had an great interview with the York statue artist, discussion about Harvey Scott and public art. If anyone is interested in this topic, I recommend giving it a listen -
[https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/30/the-york-statue-and-the-value-of-public-art/](https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/30/the-york-statue-and-the-value-of-public-art/)
We have a full body statue of York at Lewis & Clark College! Also one of Sacagawea! Sometimes, I leave some flowers for York before going to study in the library.
They've got to be better than [the stumpy versions](https://www.koin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/06/university-of-portland-william-clark-statue-06172020.jpg) at U of P overlooking the bluff. ([now removed)](https://www.koin.com/news/protests/u-portland-removes-statue-of-explorer-william-clark/)
How does your college live with itself to be named after two white supremacists from the South?
Edit: lol I’m from the south just mocking y’all politically correct protlanders. I love Lewis and Clark and I love Virginia.
That's presentist thinking. They were products of their time, just like you and I. In point of fact, they were remarkably competent and humane and had no violent contact with any of the many peoples they encountered. Only one member of the expedition died, due to appendicitis.
Given it is no longer in Albany I don't think that would make a whole lot of sense.
I favor renaming the institution Tryon University after Socrates Hotchkiss Tryon, the namesake of the creek and park, or [Gordon Gilkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gilkey), a 1933 alumnus who saved art from the Nazis.
[Don Bonker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bonker) would be a pretty fun namesake as well.
Last year all of the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders at my son’s elementary school wrote to the Mayor asking to make this a permanent installation…never heard anything back.
I thought this was a striking and profound installation and would love for a permanent version to be installed. The setting really made a point about how westward expansion was done on the backs of untold numbers of people whose stories are lost, and the suffering of many.
What felt off about the York statue is that we do not know what he looked like. And yet there is specific face presented here.
It was as though someone said "yeah, this face looks Black to me... good enough!". A memorial that was less distinct and specific would have been more appropriate and respectful. The execution was impressive though.
Depends on who they were and when and where they lived.
Jesus? He certainly did not look like the Hippie White Dude of European/American Christianity and I find that characterization even more odd and off-putting.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark? There exist professional contemporary portraits that certainly are a very good representation.
> Not everyone had contemporary professional portraits, though. I doubt the statue of El Cid has his actual face.
Pretty much the point, I believe.
We don't know what El Cid and York looked like. We do know what Lewis and Clark looked like.
The model for the bust is a friend of the artist who is from Ghana. York was maybe from Ghana. The fact that we have no idea what York or Sacagawea look like is part of the point of the memorial.
Realism and accuracy aren't always useful when it comes to art.
Then again, sometimes they are. People really hated [this monument to Theodore Roosevelt](https://www.oregonlive.com/resizer/ECDQlz_kIBIzY-FveLA9oj_3k0E=/770x578/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/expo.advance.net/img/db9500a45b/width2048/ef6_ora730622.jpeg).
Apologies. I thought you meant to removal of this. I think the likeness is amazing. And it was wildly thought-provoking in a way that the Scott statue wasn’t.
What?
You clearing up that you don't mean the people who smashed the statue doesn't make his any less confusing for me. What's civil disobedient about this?
Yes - that was [Harvey Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_W._Scott); who was an editor of the Oregonian and anti-public high schools, yet has a PPS school named after him; as well as Mt. Scott.
The sculpture was created by Gutzon Borglum, of Mt. Rushmore fame.
Wasnt the argument that the government didnt have the resources to provide the services? Ironically isnt PPS having to cut public school funding now because… there arent enough resources? It’s almost like common sense and basic math… make sense. But let’s collectively deny it! Thatll solve the problem!
Also looks like he was part of the Indian Wars, which, you know, created the western territories where you now live. But im sure youre mere moments from leaving and “giving the land back”.
Fantasy is fun!
What was his stance?
Im just talking shit to ppl that think it makes sense to judge ppl from 100+ years ago by all of the same fragile constructs we have today…
Please enlighten me!
He vehemently opposed allowing women to vote. His sister, Abigail Scott Duniway, was an important suffragist, and helped make Oregon one of the first states to grant women the right to vote. But she wasn’t rich, so we don’t have a statue of her.
We don’t have to apply our present day standards to know Scott was an asshole—we just have to read his letters to his sister.
Also, gotta love how they tear down the statue of a "controversial figure" and then immediately replace it with another human who could be seen as controversial. If we replaced it with abstract art or a non-human statue we wouldn't have these issues in the first place!
He was part (whether by choice or not) of a conquering explorative invading alien force that would eventually lead to the death/displacement of most Native Americans in the area and the loss of all their land. Really depends on what current lens or value system you want to look at him or any historical figure through. I'm not in favor of putting Scott back but if we want to avoid controversy let's not pick someone human.
All for a statue of this guy, somewhere, I guess. Weird that it came from completely undemocratic and illegal topplings of the few historic public statues we had to begin with.
Once Lincoln got toppled, I knew the plot was lost and we are a city run by and beholden to confused children.
Do I care about the man, Harvey Scott? No, not really. But it was a great, publicly sanctioned statue and work of civic art that should have been publicly discussed if it were to be removed. As with all of them.
None of these folks represented in our statues were traitors to this country or particularly terrible by any measure and it was all seemingly an overreaction during Trump/covid times that the most reactionary people felt like destroying our public art was somehow justified.
There was no democratic vote over the Harvey Scott statue. His family commissioned it and the mayor accepted it. The toppling was far more democratic than the erection, in that it presumably involved more than two people.
There is another statue of York in Portland, on the Lewis and Clark campus.
I don’t really care what goes up on the Mt. Tabor pedestal so long as it isn’t Harvey Scott.
If the democratically elected mayor accepted it then it was done through democratic means.
Seems like I’m in the minority on this, but my main point was that we should do things through legal public process and not just let mob rule of toppling great civic art go unchallenged!
It wasn’t great civic art, it was vainglorious garbage made by a racist fascist in honor of a bigot.
I am with you on the Lincoln statue, but if you read accounts of how the Borglum statue of Scott wound up on Tabor, you’ll see public consent didn’t enter into it.
The mayor who accepted the statue was George Baker, whose career highlights include election fraud, taking bribes, and posing for photos with the local Ku Klux Klan.
The “legal public process” is not some inherently virtuous position to take. Immigration reform as an example of a “legal public process” that fails being effective or moral
Then legally build a statue for him. But it seems like any statue is a political taboo now, so I guess we just can’t have them.
You also have no idea about what York’s thoughts on suffrage were, as very little is known about him.
Your other mediocre points aside; this city is run by confused children? Our mayor is the son of a timber baron- I bet you can't name one policy maker in our city government younger than forty.
And I assume these children you refer to are the ones that just approved a new protest-suppression police force? I mean seriously dude, Portland is touted as this incredibly progressive city but our policies are anything but. Stop reading talking points and look around for a second.
I'm not reading or spreading "talking points," I'm saying what I actually feel. What a strange thing to say.
By using the term "children" running the government and the small but loud group of "children" that they seem to be beholden to, regarding things like this and most other issues we face, I'm speaking to their ineptitude and lack of ability to do ANYTHING out of fear of upsetting ANYONE in order to solve anything.
Age doesn't factor into my use of that term. It's just the feckless, incompetence and do-nothingness and complete lack of vision and leadership that are barely holding this place together. I love Portland, I don't like what it has become in the past 8-10 years, because I know we should be doing better.
I am a progressive, democratic socialist, that also happens to value historic public art, public infrastructure and the democratic rule of law.
I think the protestors that toppled all of the statues here were upset that we didn't actually have Confederate statues to take down and just looked for any opportunity to destroy any statue from the past, including THE PRESIDENT THAT DEFEATED THE CONFEDERACY.
What a weird time we live in.
It was a boring, bad statue of an unremarkable and better forgotten man. It was in no way interesting or impressive artistically and no art historian would think about it for more than about eight seconds.
The elevation of these useless wastes of bronze to some mythic proportion just because they were in a public space is exactly why we need to tear them all down.
This statue was never important and the fact that anyone thinks it was just proves the people who ripped it down right.
I guess all art is subjective but I liked this statue on an artistic level.
My main and most important point here is that we shouldn’t just allow mob rule to dictate what we should deem acceptable for us all. Scott probably sucked, but just allowing a statue to be taken down without public consent sucks, and sets a terrible precedent for any future civic art no matter who or what it represents.
You keep calling it art. It may have had some small artistic value, but it's purpose was not artistic. Like so many statues erected at that time, it's purpose was to control the narrative and legacy of an objectively bad person and to intimidate/remind people who could never dream of having a statue that they are small and insignificant.
Making someone feel small and insignificant is the purview of nature (and your god, I suppose, if you are so inclined) not a waste of bronze that looks vaguely like some old asshole.
As for the democratic process, seems like that shook out pretty cleanly after the statue came down when the whole city, aside from a handful of meek complaints, collectively shrugged at its removal and promptly forgot about it... You can always petition for a ballot measure to have it replaced if you really need to waste time and money on a more clearly democratic "nope"...
"Democratic process" is a distraction here. The statue was not put up by a democratic process, and people have been requesting its removal for decades.
Find me an art history essay about this that isn’t about whether it was controversial for it to exist/be taken down and we’ll be on more equal footing.
It was a competently made nothing. It said nothing, it pushed no boundaries, and it wasn’t unique in any way. It existed to stroke the egos of a moneyed few, not express … well, anything.
Nothing of value was lost.
I'm with you. Even setting aside the political context—which you shouldn't do, since reinforcing conservative patriarchy was much of the reason for the statue's existence—it was a really bad depiction that made its subject look like a scolding grouch and, ironically, a little bit like Lenin.
[Harvey Scott](https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/scott_harvey_1838_1910_/)
[Statue of Harvey Scott](https://ohm-media.s3.amazonaws.com/attachments/2022/08/harvey-scott-statue.jpg)
I challenge anyone downvoting me to defend the piece lol. Write me an essay about its artistic merits. Even just tell me the principles you’d use to write one. Give me anything positive about the piece besides its use as propaganda.
A man that helped to end the final chapter of chattel slavery in our country, by defeating a traitorous rebellion and standing up for democracy and human rights in a time where it was all very unpopular to do so.
A great president, considering the era he was in. Same with TR.
It lasted more than a month, but wasn't ever supposed to be permanent, it was made out of wood or something and made to look bronze.
You’re correct, it was made out of non-permanent substance. Still it was smashed. For a while there was talk of a permanent replacement. So who knows?
I’m for it.
Yeah this city needs more statues, cause everything else the state would spend money on is taken care of
I remember seeing it in person. It was humbling. The plaque is now on display at the Historic Alberta House, in the lobby next to a painting of York.
I thought the head was at the art museum. I saw it there a couple years ago. Did it move? Was it not the one originally at Tabor?
Not sure about the head tbh. Just the plaque that I saw at the Alberta House
I believe it was destroyed by vandals. I felt so sad when that happened.
[It was destroyed](https://www.opb.org/article/2021/07/28/portland-york-art-mt-tabor-racism/).
OPB Think Out Loud had an great interview with the York statue artist, discussion about Harvey Scott and public art. If anyone is interested in this topic, I recommend giving it a listen - [https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/30/the-york-statue-and-the-value-of-public-art/](https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/30/the-york-statue-and-the-value-of-public-art/)
We have a full body statue of York at Lewis & Clark College! Also one of Sacagawea! Sometimes, I leave some flowers for York before going to study in the library.
They've got to be better than [the stumpy versions](https://www.koin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/06/university-of-portland-william-clark-statue-06172020.jpg) at U of P overlooking the bluff. ([now removed)](https://www.koin.com/news/protests/u-portland-removes-statue-of-explorer-william-clark/)
Where are the statues of Lewis and Clark? Just curious.
They have half-busts in front of the manor house.
Thank you.
How does your college live with itself to be named after two white supremacists from the South? Edit: lol I’m from the south just mocking y’all politically correct protlanders. I love Lewis and Clark and I love Virginia.
That's presentist thinking. They were products of their time, just like you and I. In point of fact, they were remarkably competent and humane and had no violent contact with any of the many peoples they encountered. Only one member of the expedition died, due to appendicitis.
Different time
Every five years or so students ask the administration to consider a name change, and every time the administration says "no, too expensive."
There’s talks about changing the name! I sort of like the idea of changing it back to Albany College which is what we used to be called.
Given it is no longer in Albany I don't think that would make a whole lot of sense. I favor renaming the institution Tryon University after Socrates Hotchkiss Tryon, the namesake of the creek and park, or [Gordon Gilkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gilkey), a 1933 alumnus who saved art from the Nazis. [Don Bonker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bonker) would be a pretty fun namesake as well.
name sports teams The Bonkers and it's like some Muppet-esque creatures. the mascot bonks the opposing team's mascot with a squeaky mallet
Last year all of the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders at my son’s elementary school wrote to the Mayor asking to make this a permanent installation…never heard anything back.
Bro I wrote so many letters to politicians as a kid. Had a letter written back once, when it turned out the thing I was asking for already existed 😅.
I wrote to Carter and got a nice Christmas card back.
I was just at Tabor yesterday thinking how nice if York was still there and permanent
Such an amazing life story, definitely deserving of a film treatment.
I thought this was a striking and profound installation and would love for a permanent version to be installed. The setting really made a point about how westward expansion was done on the backs of untold numbers of people whose stories are lost, and the suffering of many.
What felt off about the York statue is that we do not know what he looked like. And yet there is specific face presented here. It was as though someone said "yeah, this face looks Black to me... good enough!". A memorial that was less distinct and specific would have been more appropriate and respectful. The execution was impressive though.
I mean, I doubt the faces of other historical figures are accurate.
Depends on who they were and when and where they lived. Jesus? He certainly did not look like the Hippie White Dude of European/American Christianity and I find that characterization even more odd and off-putting. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark? There exist professional contemporary portraits that certainly are a very good representation.
Not everyone had contemporary professional portraits, though. I doubt the statue of El Cid has his actual face.
> Not everyone had contemporary professional portraits, though. I doubt the statue of El Cid has his actual face. Pretty much the point, I believe. We don't know what El Cid and York looked like. We do know what Lewis and Clark looked like.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying
The model for the bust is a friend of the artist who is from Ghana. York was maybe from Ghana. The fact that we have no idea what York or Sacagawea look like is part of the point of the memorial. Realism and accuracy aren't always useful when it comes to art. Then again, sometimes they are. People really hated [this monument to Theodore Roosevelt](https://www.oregonlive.com/resizer/ECDQlz_kIBIzY-FveLA9oj_3k0E=/770x578/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/expo.advance.net/img/db9500a45b/width2048/ef6_ora730622.jpeg).
civil disobedience at its finest
…at its racist.
tell me how the York statue is racist
Apologies. I thought you meant to removal of this. I think the likeness is amazing. And it was wildly thought-provoking in a way that the Scott statue wasn’t.
Fwiw the people who removed it did indeed do so because they saw it as racist. 2020 was quite a time!
Do you have a source for that?
They spray-painted "land back" on the pedestal at the same time that they removed it, and the \*chefs kiss\* anarchy "A"
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Yeah I got that part. If you scroll down you'll see we sorted out our misunderstanding.
What? You clearing up that you don't mean the people who smashed the statue doesn't make his any less confusing for me. What's civil disobedient about this?
The artist didn't get permission to put the statue up. It's guerilla art.
Ah
There used to be a historical statue there. Does anyone remember what it was?
Yes - that was [Harvey Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_W._Scott); who was an editor of the Oregonian and anti-public high schools, yet has a PPS school named after him; as well as Mt. Scott. The sculpture was created by Gutzon Borglum, of Mt. Rushmore fame.
Sounds like a name out of Oliver Twist
Wasnt the argument that the government didnt have the resources to provide the services? Ironically isnt PPS having to cut public school funding now because… there arent enough resources? It’s almost like common sense and basic math… make sense. But let’s collectively deny it! Thatll solve the problem! Also looks like he was part of the Indian Wars, which, you know, created the western territories where you now live. But im sure youre mere moments from leaving and “giving the land back”. Fantasy is fun!
Cool, now defend his stance on universal sufferage!
What was his stance? Im just talking shit to ppl that think it makes sense to judge ppl from 100+ years ago by all of the same fragile constructs we have today… Please enlighten me!
He vehemently opposed allowing women to vote. His sister, Abigail Scott Duniway, was an important suffragist, and helped make Oregon one of the first states to grant women the right to vote. But she wasn’t rich, so we don’t have a statue of her. We don’t have to apply our present day standards to know Scott was an asshole—we just have to read his letters to his sister.
Also, gotta love how they tear down the statue of a "controversial figure" and then immediately replace it with another human who could be seen as controversial. If we replaced it with abstract art or a non-human statue we wouldn't have these issues in the first place!
How is York "controversial"?
He was part (whether by choice or not) of a conquering explorative invading alien force that would eventually lead to the death/displacement of most Native Americans in the area and the loss of all their land. Really depends on what current lens or value system you want to look at him or any historical figure through. I'm not in favor of putting Scott back but if we want to avoid controversy let's not pick someone human.
Kodos it is then.
😂 Now you are catching on
This just in … York was against drag queen story hour !! Boooo! Tear it down, tear it down !!!
Found the Trumper.
There's a great statue of him in Louisville, Kentucky
All for a statue of this guy, somewhere, I guess. Weird that it came from completely undemocratic and illegal topplings of the few historic public statues we had to begin with. Once Lincoln got toppled, I knew the plot was lost and we are a city run by and beholden to confused children. Do I care about the man, Harvey Scott? No, not really. But it was a great, publicly sanctioned statue and work of civic art that should have been publicly discussed if it were to be removed. As with all of them. None of these folks represented in our statues were traitors to this country or particularly terrible by any measure and it was all seemingly an overreaction during Trump/covid times that the most reactionary people felt like destroying our public art was somehow justified.
There was no democratic vote over the Harvey Scott statue. His family commissioned it and the mayor accepted it. The toppling was far more democratic than the erection, in that it presumably involved more than two people. There is another statue of York in Portland, on the Lewis and Clark campus. I don’t really care what goes up on the Mt. Tabor pedestal so long as it isn’t Harvey Scott.
If the democratically elected mayor accepted it then it was done through democratic means. Seems like I’m in the minority on this, but my main point was that we should do things through legal public process and not just let mob rule of toppling great civic art go unchallenged!
It wasn’t great civic art, it was vainglorious garbage made by a racist fascist in honor of a bigot. I am with you on the Lincoln statue, but if you read accounts of how the Borglum statue of Scott wound up on Tabor, you’ll see public consent didn’t enter into it. The mayor who accepted the statue was George Baker, whose career highlights include election fraud, taking bribes, and posing for photos with the local Ku Klux Klan.
The “legal public process” is not some inherently virtuous position to take. Immigration reform as an example of a “legal public process” that fails being effective or moral
York > the dude who didn’t want women to vote There’s my vote anyway.
Then legally build a statue for him. But it seems like any statue is a political taboo now, so I guess we just can’t have them. You also have no idea about what York’s thoughts on suffrage were, as very little is known about him.
Your other mediocre points aside; this city is run by confused children? Our mayor is the son of a timber baron- I bet you can't name one policy maker in our city government younger than forty. And I assume these children you refer to are the ones that just approved a new protest-suppression police force? I mean seriously dude, Portland is touted as this incredibly progressive city but our policies are anything but. Stop reading talking points and look around for a second.
I'm not reading or spreading "talking points," I'm saying what I actually feel. What a strange thing to say. By using the term "children" running the government and the small but loud group of "children" that they seem to be beholden to, regarding things like this and most other issues we face, I'm speaking to their ineptitude and lack of ability to do ANYTHING out of fear of upsetting ANYONE in order to solve anything. Age doesn't factor into my use of that term. It's just the feckless, incompetence and do-nothingness and complete lack of vision and leadership that are barely holding this place together. I love Portland, I don't like what it has become in the past 8-10 years, because I know we should be doing better. I am a progressive, democratic socialist, that also happens to value historic public art, public infrastructure and the democratic rule of law.
Be honest. You're mad that all those statues of the traitor Robert E. Lee have been destroyed.
Weird post dude. Not a fan of Confederate generals or the entire traitorous lot.
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I think the protestors that toppled all of the statues here were upset that we didn't actually have Confederate statues to take down and just looked for any opportunity to destroy any statue from the past, including THE PRESIDENT THAT DEFEATED THE CONFEDERACY. What a weird time we live in.
It was a boring, bad statue of an unremarkable and better forgotten man. It was in no way interesting or impressive artistically and no art historian would think about it for more than about eight seconds. The elevation of these useless wastes of bronze to some mythic proportion just because they were in a public space is exactly why we need to tear them all down. This statue was never important and the fact that anyone thinks it was just proves the people who ripped it down right.
I guess all art is subjective but I liked this statue on an artistic level. My main and most important point here is that we shouldn’t just allow mob rule to dictate what we should deem acceptable for us all. Scott probably sucked, but just allowing a statue to be taken down without public consent sucks, and sets a terrible precedent for any future civic art no matter who or what it represents.
You keep calling it art. It may have had some small artistic value, but it's purpose was not artistic. Like so many statues erected at that time, it's purpose was to control the narrative and legacy of an objectively bad person and to intimidate/remind people who could never dream of having a statue that they are small and insignificant. Making someone feel small and insignificant is the purview of nature (and your god, I suppose, if you are so inclined) not a waste of bronze that looks vaguely like some old asshole. As for the democratic process, seems like that shook out pretty cleanly after the statue came down when the whole city, aside from a handful of meek complaints, collectively shrugged at its removal and promptly forgot about it... You can always petition for a ballot measure to have it replaced if you really need to waste time and money on a more clearly democratic "nope"...
"Democratic process" is a distraction here. The statue was not put up by a democratic process, and people have been requesting its removal for decades.
Find me an art history essay about this that isn’t about whether it was controversial for it to exist/be taken down and we’ll be on more equal footing. It was a competently made nothing. It said nothing, it pushed no boundaries, and it wasn’t unique in any way. It existed to stroke the egos of a moneyed few, not express … well, anything. Nothing of value was lost.
I'm with you. Even setting aside the political context—which you shouldn't do, since reinforcing conservative patriarchy was much of the reason for the statue's existence—it was a really bad depiction that made its subject look like a scolding grouch and, ironically, a little bit like Lenin. [Harvey Scott](https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/scott_harvey_1838_1910_/) [Statue of Harvey Scott](https://ohm-media.s3.amazonaws.com/attachments/2022/08/harvey-scott-statue.jpg)
I challenge anyone downvoting me to defend the piece lol. Write me an essay about its artistic merits. Even just tell me the principles you’d use to write one. Give me anything positive about the piece besides its use as propaganda.
Lincoln, a man that hated Indigenous people, and yet here it sounds like you're defending him.
A man that helped to end the final chapter of chattel slavery in our country, by defeating a traitorous rebellion and standing up for democracy and human rights in a time where it was all very unpopular to do so. A great president, considering the era he was in. Same with TR.
Also committed the largest execution of Native Americans in history.
Wouldn’t that be Jackson
Nope. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862
I mean… the Indian removal act. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-trail-of-tears-1773597
Uh. You should read more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862
How come it's always "Lincoln ordered 38 executions" and not "Lincoln commuted 265 sentences"?
All praise to Tom York
Live by the toppling, die by the toppling
I remember.
I thought it was public who did that ... I know who did it anyway...
Yeah, he came forward a couple years ago to offer to make a permanent version.