“They double-timed that,” Hamza told me. “The conservation of the one in Arlington Cemetery—this has a really high price ticket on it. And I would say the same with the Pike, I didn’t expect it to go back up so quickly—I think obviously it’s to make a statement, to send a message.”
Simpson explained that it’s not as if we’re about to see any of the statues in “Monuments” go back up, since they were all acquired from local or state governments, unlike the Albert Pike statue and the Confederate Memorial, which are under federal jurisdiction. “I say jurisdiction and I say, Oh, there’s legal distinctions between these things…but you also know that he doesn’t give a fuck about legal distinction,” Simpson said.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Hamza said, chuckling nervously.
“So if it’s expedient or useful for him to say something about anything, he’ll do it, whether it’s real or legal,” Simpson said.
Trump hasn’t weighed in on the show—yet!—but it’s already angered a few of his favorite outlets, with more invective surely to come. In a Fox News article helpfully labeled Opinion, David Marcus called Unmanned Drone “the most grotesque of the works,” and likened the exhibition to a middle finger to the right. The headline? “LA museum’s desecration of Confederate statues is pure barbarism.”
Simpson noted that, for all his discussion of barbarism, Marcus—the author of Charade: The COVID Lies That Crushed a Nation—did not mention the massacre in Charleston, the origin point of the show.
“So the idea that, ‘Well, it’s, like, pure barbarism’…I think you might want to save that for that,” Hamza said.
It’s unclear from the article whether Marcus visited the show in person. If he had, he might have noticed the subtle moments, the more low-key flexes. It plays with scale in an ingenious way. Statues that were once perched high on pedestals are installed on the ground, allowing one to fully grapple with their high-romantic kitsch.
