Nearly four years after black-clad activists wielded blow torches and chains in Portland to tear down prominently displayed statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and George Washington, city leaders at last appear poised to determine the monuments’ fates.
Maybe.
On Friday, Commissioner Dan Ryan — who oversees the city’s arts program — will unveil plans to return each of the three celebrated presidents toppled during 2020′s racial justice protests to public view, a decision reached without the extensive, equity-centered community input he and other Portland officials promised.
The plans are far from fully baked, however, despite being months behind the February deadline Ryan and arts officials set late last year. When the bronze statues might see the light of day and with what additional historical context or interpretation, if any, remains to be seen.
The city has yet to start the painstaking and costly work to repair the monuments or determine in what order they should be restored. Officials concede that fixing the Roosevelt monument alone could take up to 18 months — once that work begins.
The delays and missteps are the latest in a series that have plagued Portland leaders as they struggle to rethink the way the city chooses who gets to be memorialized in public space, pleasing neither fans nor opponents of returning the trio of monuments.
And, with the city’s pending new form of government slated to end Ryan’s role as arts commissioner Jan. 1, what happens to the presidential statues could be thrust back into question before any of them are actually displayed.
“The city has been playing politics with these protected historic resources for too long. Just fix them,” said Aubrey Russell, an attorney who’s banded with historic preservationists and other civic boosters to advocate for the statues’ swift return. “The city arts program seems intent on continued delays that will kick this down the road even further.”
In a statement, Ryan defended the setbacks and touted some success.
“This has been a long and complicated process — much like our nation’s long and complicated history,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “While this process has been lengthy, we are finally making progress.”
‘A DRAMATIC DEPARTURE’
A new report on the so-called Portland Monuments Project shows officials with the city arts program — now led by two former Ryan staffers — have decided to eventually move the statue of Washington to Washington Park in Southwest Portland.
It had stood at the five corners of Northeast Sandy Boulevard at 57th Avenue for nearly 100 years until demonstrators toppled it in June 2020, less than a month after the police murder of George Floyd, a Black man, ignited waves of protests nationwide.
City officials also plan to return the statues of Lincoln and Roosevelt to the South Park Blocks, where they also stood for a century or so before being torn down. Their destruction came during a riot that October in which participants also smashed windows at the Oregon Historical Society, fired bullets and vandalized nearby businesses.
Meanwhile, two other Portland-owned monuments toppled or removed during months of nightly demonstrations and subsequently hidden away in an undisclosed warehouse alongside the three presidents won’t return to public view.
The pair are a sculpture depicting a gun-and-Bible-toting pioneer family, long posted in downtown’s Chapman Square, known as “The Promised Land”; and a statue erected long ago on top of Mt. Tabor honoring former Oregonian editor Harvey Scott, a racist who opposed women’s suffrage.
Separately, city arts officials have said they intend to restore and return the iconic Thompson Elk Fountain to its original location downtown by the end of 2025.
And Portland arts officials announced the city has commissioned a new permanent public sculpture depicting York, an enslaved Black member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. A previous bust of York, created by a local artist and surreptitiously installed atop Scott’s former pedestal at Mt. Tabor, was itself toppled and removed in 2021.
“Our history, much like our people, is not static,” reads a draft copy of the report obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Our focus in the Portland Monuments Project is to better understand what is important to the people here and now. Who or what do we want to remember? And, what can we never forget?”
The report, authored by the city arts program, outlines that the city now plans to kickstart a series of community engagement events in September, beginning with a two-day “Monument Symposium” followed by additional programs through next winter.
By the summer of 2026 — more than two years from now — the city plans to analyze data collected during its community outreach programs and formulate new policy proposals around public art, according to the report.
“This would be a dramatic departure from what we had initially promised the public,” Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who served as the city’s arts liaison between 2021 and 2023, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Last July, the Portland City Council adopted a report crafted by a team of outside officials led by experts at Lewis & Clark College to build an equity-centered plan around the city’s public art. It recommended the city host a series of walking tours, art history lectures and community discussions to inform both the fate of the five toppled monuments and how the city should make decisions about statues in the future.
At the same meeting, city arts officials and Ryan established a timeline to complete the work. They wanted to come to a decision on the toppled monuments no later than February and a revised policy on reviewing public art by July 2024.
“The Portland Monuments Project is a great example of how thorough and inclusive community engagement can ensure our public policy reflects our entire community,” said Stephan Herrera, then a policy adviser with the city arts program, at the July 19 meeting. He left the city in April.
Ryan, who’d inherited the city’s arts portfolio, including work around monuments, seven months prior from Rubio, was more emphatic.
“We are determined to create a thorough and inclusive process to ensure underrepresented communities are engaged in these discussions,” he said. “It’s imperative to me that we handle the Portland Monuments Project with utmost care, and it sets an example for the nation on how we respond to conflict during these times of tension.”
‘FATE OF THE FIVE’
Yet things started to go awry several months later as a final plan came into focus, according to emails and other documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.
In October, Portland arts officials, working with an outside consultant, brought to Ryan and his staff a proposal of outreach work that wouldn’t lead to a decision on the toppled monuments until July instead of February.
Darion Jones, then a senior policy adviser to Ryan, said that wouldn’t cut it.
“I want to emphasize that the current council has substantial support for an expedited timeline. July is too long,” Jones, now a city arts program director, wrote Oct. 19. “The city has the opportunity to faithfully stick to the original engagement schedule, proposing robust community involvement and setting a decision deadline for the fate of the five in February.”
Several days later, records show, Ryan directed arts officials to stick with the February timeline.
That prompted the resignations of the consultant, who was earning $130 an hour, and later Jess Perlitz, a sculpture and monuments specialist at Lewis & Clark tapped to advise the city on the project.
“You are effectively uncoupling public participation and input on issues as a means to expedite an announcement on the five toppled/removed monuments,” Perlitz wrote Nov. 29. “(This) sabotages the entire process. It will further erode public confidence.”
In an interview this week, Perlitz remained skeptical.
“I don’t think making a decision on these monuments is a way to start public engagement,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “There’s been a lot of bungling and bureaucratic missteps.”
The October decision also sent officials scrambling for public outreach opportunities prior to February, records show. The most significant effort was the creation and launch of an online survey by city arts leaders, at the behest of Ryan and his staff, focused on the toppled monuments.
More than 5,000 people completed the survey, which Portland officials heavily promoted, between November and early February. The vast majority of respondents who directly answered the questions indicated they supported return of the presidential monuments.
Yet the city ultimately decided against analyzing the data or publicizing the results after researchers at Portland State University identified numerous problems with its design and execution. Some questions were loaded while others were unclear; some omitted needed response options; and it appeared a large number of respondents didn’t live in or near Portland, among other problems, the PSU officials wrote.
“Take the survey down now – do not use it to collect any more data,” reads the researchers’ top recommendation, according to a January memo. “Should start over with a clear, unbiased approach to learning how Portland should determine criteria for which monuments or art installations are included in the city.”
Russell, the historic preservation advocate, fumed over the city’s decision and has since reviewed the data himself.
“The survey is the best indication we have of how the public feels about the monuments,” he said. “But the city wants to bury the results.”
‘REALLY MESSY’
City officials acknowledge missteps.
“This has all been really messy,” said Chariti Montez, who left Ryan’s office last fall and is now the new head of the city arts program. “I can’t make excuses for that.”
Adding to the turmoil and continued delays is the need to initiate statue repairs.
According to Portland officials, the city did not begin the process of filing insurance claims for the five damaged monuments — a necessary first step — until last summer.
Meanwhile, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, which has contracted with the city to oversee the restoration work, has identified just a single conservator-restorer equipped to repair the sculptures.
Montez said the city currently plans to have the repair work begin in August, likely with the Lincoln bronze to start, which they estimate will take two months to repair. The likeness of Washington will take about a year and Roosevelt a year-and-a-half to fix the damages, officials said.
“If they’re done one after another, it will take about 36 months to do the repairs,” Montez said, adding the city is attempting to find other conservators to expedite the timeline.
Despite the challenges, Ryan said he is optimistic.
“The elk is returning, The Promised Land is retired, and the presidents are getting repaired,” he said.
“Portlanders will have many more opportunities to engage as we continue this dialogue,” Ryan continued. “I am hopeful that when the monuments are returned with interpretations, they will serve to both inform and heal our community.”
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