Collecting after iconoclasm

Abstract In the past decade, there has been a global reckoning surrounding prominent public sculptures and the histories they exalt. When a monument is toppled, either by the will of the people or by the will of public authorities and curators, how does it influence what we collect and display in the aftermath? The editorial team of the Journal of the History of Collections invited Helen McConnell Simpson, Senior Curator of History at Bristol Museums, and Monique Scott, Associate Professor of History of Art and Director of Museum Studies at Bryn Mawr College, to share their expertise on the deinstallation (respectively) of statues of Edward Colston in Bristol and Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and reflect on the impact of the removal of these monuments on museum collections and collecting.