Art in Focus: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel

Join Curator of Education Michelle DiMarzo for an informal discussion of this work from the exhibition Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City, 1852-1853, oil on canvas. The New York Historical, Gift of Samuel V. Hoffman, 1925.6. Courtesy of The New York Historical

This event will also be livestreamed at 1 p.m. Click here to register for a reminder.

About the Exhibition: Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy (organized by The New York Historical) explores monuments and their representations in public spaces as flashpoints of fierce debate over national identity, politics, and race that have raged for centuries. Offering a historical foundation for understanding today’s controversies, the exhibition features fragments of a statue of King George III torn down by American Revolutionaries, a souvenir replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York City’s first public monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman, among other objects from The New York Historical’s collection. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed. For more information, click here.

Host or Publisher Fairfield University Art Museum