What's on the list of Chicago monuments the mayor's advisory panel wants removed?

The Chicago Monuments Project has proposed dozens of statues and plaques in Chicago be removed or modified, including the city's three Columbus statues and the Balbo Monument.

Image by tupungato/Depositphotos.com

Chicago's Christopher Columbus statues were removed temporarily in the summer of 2020 amid protests over the murder of George Floyd and the police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

Following the protests and the subsequent removal of the statues, Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed a city committee, the Chicago Monuments Project, to review the many public monuments in Chicago to "address the hard truths of Chicago’s racial history."

According to the Chicago Monument's website, the committee's purpose is to "grapple with the often unacknowledged – or forgotten – history associated with the City’s various municipal art collections and provides a vehicle to address the hard truths of Chicago’s racial history, confront the ways in which that history has and has not been memorialized, and develop a framework for marking public space that elevates new ways to memorialize Chicago’s history more equitably and accurately."

Balbo Monument in Burnham Park, ChicagoImage by J. Crocker, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

And now, after a lengthy review, the committee released their report in which they recommended the three Columbus statues be removed permanently.

In addition to the Columbus statues at Grant Park, Arrigo Park, and the Drake Fountain at 92nd Street, the committee suggested others should be taken down or modified.

What are the statues flagged for removal?

Besides the Columbus statues, here is the list of the monuments and plaques the committee recommended should be removed:

• Italo Balbo Monument
• Jacques Marquette-Louis Jolliet Memorial
• Fort Dearborn Massacre
• Kinzie Mansion Plaque
• Jean Baptiste Beaubien Plaque
• DuSable Bridge reliefs: The Defense, The Pioneers, Discoverers, and Regeneration
• Tablets dedicated to Cavelier De La Salle and Jolliet and Marquette
• General Philip Henry Sheridan
• Marquette Memorial
• Bust of Melville Fuller

Defense by Henry Herring, 1928Image by JeremyA, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Three other statues were flagged for "artistic interventions," meaning the monuments are recommended to stay put, but with modifications to "help viewers reconsider the works and their subjects."

These are:

• Statue of William McKinley,
• Monument to George Washington
• Indians (The Bowman and the Spearman)

Ivan Meštrović's The Spearman (Equestrian Indians). Installed in 1928 in Congress Plaza, Grant Park, Chicago.Ponor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What happens next?

Mayor Lightfoot has not said whether or not she agrees with the committee's findings. However, in March 2022, she did say that she expected Grant Park's Columbus statue to return.

The Mayor's Office issued a statement after the report was released in which she said, "There are many more steps that will be taken on this long journey toward reckoning, understanding, and healing and I look forward to more dialogue, public engagement, and the path forward."

You can find the Chicago Monuments Project's complete report here.

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