San Francisco to initiate 'Equity Assessment' of contentious statues: Concentration of 'White Privilege'

The San Francisco Art Commission intends to spend $3 million on initiatives to remove and replace contentious monuments.

In a meeting last week, Angela Carrier, the senior project manager, provided more information about the "Shaping Legacy" plan, which aims to tackle over 100 monuments and memorials that emphasize power, privilege, White supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism.

Carrier stated that we have recognized and confronted the fact that these monuments and memorials no longer embody the values that the city claims to uphold, and continue to disregard the experiences of communities of color, perpetuating inequalities in race, gender, and culture.

The commission described the plan as a "multi-year equity-focused initiative to critically examine the monuments and memorials in San Francisco's Civic Art collection." The first step will involve an "Equity Audit" and review of the monuments in the collection.

"The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Carrier pledged to involve communities that have traditionally been left out of the conversation. "The process of atonement, restoration, and recovery is not an effortless task," Carrier stated to the committee."

The Mellon Foundation has granted $3 million for the project, which is part of a larger plan called "The Monuments Project" to invest $250 million by 2025 to reimagine the public landscape.

Carrier stated that this work demands our attention to race while addressing past, present, and future inequities, and developing effective strategies to achieve an equitable future.

In 2018, the commission started a review of controversial statues, sparked by the debate over the "Early Days" sculpture, which depicted a Native American kneeling in front of a Spanish cowboy. The statue was eventually removed.

In 2023, the San Francisco Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee, established by Democratic Mayor London Breed following the George Floyd riots, recommended an equity audit of statues.

"In 2020, former arts commissioner Dorka Keehn stated that the audit's purpose is to determine which monuments are currently considered offensive and, if so, what should replace them. Additionally, she raised a broader question: "How long should any monument remain in existence?""