Statues Then and Now, with Verity Platt

Abstract

In the last decade, public statues have become a focal point for debates about the remembrance and commemoration of history. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, Edward Colston in Bristol, and Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford: do statues of these figures remind us of their harmful legacies, or valorise them in spite of them? And how do our interpretations and misinterpretations of classical sculpture inform the style and significance of public statuary in the modern day? Shivaike Shah speaks to Verity Platt, Professor of Classics and History of Art at Cornell University, about what we get wrong about classical statues, and about the history of iconoclasm in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Bibliography

Open-source

Augustus of Prima Porta, painted cast (Ashmolean Museum collections)

Lyra Monteiro, ‘How a Trump Executive Order Aims to Set White Supremacy in Stone’, Hyperallergic

Transcript

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.