Amid the many expensive challenges facing the Portland City Council these days, one problem has a quick, easy solution: Put the Abe Lincoln statue back on its original pedestal in the South Park Blocks.
Alas, the city’s Office of Arts and Culture wants to reduce
Lincoln to ground level for reasons it reached after largely isolated meetings
with special-interest groups dating to 2024.
The general public has never been invited to express its views. Responses
to social media posts about the proposed demotion of Lincoln suggest that a
massive majority of Portlanders want to see Lincoln returned to his original
setting, where he stood from 1928 to 2020.
Citizens might – or might not – have a chance to express their views on Sept. 8 when the Office of Arts and Culture hosts “Lincoln’s Return: A Public Conversation” at the Mark Building, 1219 SW Park Ave.
Whether citizens will be able to respond appears
questionable, given the city’s explanation of the event. It will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. and is
scheduled to include presentations on public art, history, place keeping and
conservation. Then a panel of experts
will undertake a discussion. A
promotional description says the agenda will include “a chance to ask questions
of the panelists and other Portlanders who care about history and public art.” A cynic might suggest the program sounds like
a sales pitch for an unpopular product.
Though there is no fee to attend, guests are encouraged to register in advance at: Lincoln’s Return: A Public Conversation | Portland.gov Registration would assure one’s attendance even if the crowd is too large for everyone to sit inside. Interest in the statue’s fate suggests that a large crowd is possible.
----Fred Leeson
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You stated that the general public had never been invited to express its views but that is not strictly correct. In fact, it’s worse. The Portland Monuments Project conducted a public survey regarding the restoration of vandalized statues between November 2023 and February 2024. Although a report by The Oregonian noted that a majority of the over 5,000 respondents favored returning the statues to their original locations, city officials disregarded the results after researchers claimed to have identified flaws in the survey's content. The only flaws I noticed at the time were the omission of Jefferson and the repeated insistence upon including the insolicited and incommissioned giant plasticine bust of York that appeared in the wake of the toppling of the statue of Harvey Scott on Mt. Tabor. Continuing to add this bust to the other historic statues that had stood in Portland for a century or more did not make any sense at all
ReplyDeleteWhat’s more, the fiction that all statue vandalism was an expression tied to social justice or George Floyd was a fiction. They were merely in the path of destruction. Traveled by a mob following behind peaceful protestors who did no damage. Further proof can be mustered in pointing out that the Thompson Elk did not have a political agenda, and within the same time period two statues of York were attacked and damaged. The guerilla bust was knocked to the ground and shattered and the statue on the University of Portland campus had to be dismantled and placed in storage because it was vandalized as well. Yet a statue entitled “Coming of the White Man” which you might expect would attract attention was not harmed in the least because it was off the beaten track in Washington Park.
The most.ridiculous thing of all was, that while the monuments committee hasn’t managed to do anymore than return the elk, they have quietly devoted time and money to having the guerilla head of York cast in bronze and mounted on display in the Portland Art zmuseum’s second floor, then introduced another survey in the museum and online to ask visitors where it should be permanently placed. All this while the historic presidential statues languish in a warehouse, unrestored.
The New York survey, which we are told was crafted by someone at PSu has problems on my opinion. I have a Oublic Relations certificate and a degree in communications from Marlhursf and we were required to create and conduct legitimate surveys in class. The York survey asked the survey takers to reflect on any disabilities they might have and one of the options was”invisibility”, playing into the false perception that York is unknown or forgotten. This is far from the truth but it would take a much longer article to point out the art already in Portland as well as York Street in the Alphabet District attributed to honor York by the city council, all of the books written about York, local celebrations, multiple mentions in the Journals and that was more than 35 of the members of the Corps of Discovery ever got. There have even been toys and action figures.
The best known members of the expedition have always been Lewis, Clark, the dog Seaman, York, Sacajawea and trailing behind those, Charbonneau.
Once again, the instincts of the public are sound but disregarded and marginalized by committees promulgating an agenda.
Here is the link to the Oregonian article on the bust. city of Portland’s die continues to refer to this as a Monument:
Deletehttps://www.wweek.com/arts/visual-arts/2026/04/20/york-statue-on-view-at-portland-art-museum-but-permanent-home-remains-undecided/