#Teddy Roosevelt statue to be removed from Museum of Natural History

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The statue of President Teddy Roosevelt at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
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The statue of President Teddy Roosevelt at the entrance to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan will be removed amid widespread protests over racial inequality and police brutality in the United States, a report said Sunday.

The statue, depicting the former president on horseback while flanked by a Native American man and a black man, has stood at the museum’s entrance since 1940, the New York Times reported.

The museum — which is privately run but sits on public land — requested the statue be moved and the city agreed, according to the report.

“Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd,” the museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told the Times.

“We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism,” she added. “Simply put, the time has come to move it.”

The statue has been criticized — and defaced — in the past for glorifying colonialism and racism.