Pittsburgh Art Commission votes to remove Columbus statue; legal challenge continues

An Allegheny County judge will likely decide the fate of the Christopher Columbus statue in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park.

Judge John T. McVay Jr. has set a virtual status conference on a lawsuit filed by the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, for 1 p.m. Thursday. The lawsuit seeks to halt the statue’s removal.

Four of five members of the Pittsburgh Art Commission voted Wednesday to remove the statue, its base and surrounding artwork and fill in a fountain in the area that’s part of the installation which has been in Schenley Park near Phipps Conservatory since 1958. One member was absent from the meeting.

Many members of the city’s Italian American community, to whom Columbus is a cultural icon, want the statue to remain. The Italian Sons and Daughters of America, a Pittsburgh-based organization that lobbies on behalf of Italians, filed its lawsuit against the city and Mayor Bill Peduto.

The statue was put into place by a city ordinance that requires it to be maintained by the city in perpetuity and the statue can’t be removed without changing that law, Matt Minsky, one of the lawyers representing the group, told the art commission Wednesday.

Minsky asked that the commission delay making a final decision until the suit is resolved, as the commission’s decision would only complicate the litigation and require more filings.

The commission voted without discussing Minsky’s comments.

It heard from Carmella Mullen, a 71-year-old native Pittsburgher who now lives in Braddock.

Mullen is a member of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America. She has lobbied to keep the statue in place.

“I was hoping they would have an open mind,” Mullen said after the meeting.

She sent the commissioners information about Columbus and his importance within the Italian American community that apparently wasn’t read, Mullen said.

“Their mind has been made up since day one,” she said.

If a person’s complete background is to be judged, there will be no statues honoring people allowed to remain in Pittsburgh because no one is perfect, she said.

Prem Rajgopal was one of the people who initially asked the art commission to remove the statue. He is an organizing fellow with the Center for Coalfield Justice, a regional group based in Washington, Pa., that lobbies to bring the concerns of coal mining to light.

Columbus’ legacy of mistreatment of the people indigenous to the American continent make him someone who should not be revered in any way, Rajgopal said.

The statue has been shrouded in plastic since Oct. 11 to prevent vandalism.

The commission fielded input from people since June and on Sept 23 voted to recommend its removal to Peduto, who endorsed removing the statue on Oct. 9.

On the website Pittsburgh Art Places, Duquesne University sociology professor emeritus Douglas Harper wrote about the Columbus statue and “the problematical nature of the memories that Columbus represents.”

Harper is also former president of the International Visual Sociology Association, a group that studies such artworks.

“It celebrates the beginning of the end for native cultures in the Americas, leading to the deaths of millions through war and disease, not to mention the cultural genocide that Native Americans still struggle to overcome,” he wrote. “Yet when the sculpture was created Columbus was a one-dimensional, uncomplicated hero and the implications of his actions were part of the myths taught in every grade school in the country and celebrated on the national holiday created in his name.”