The gutless, brainless nincompoop eunuchs who have by some unaccountable disaster been placed in charge of the Museum of Natural History in New York, in characteristically cowardly fashion, arranged to have the noble equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt removed from in front of the Museum in the middle of the night. (WSJ)

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt that stood in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for decades was removed, the result of years of debate over a monument that critics said glorified colonialism.

A crane lifted the bronze portion of the statue up from the museum’s Central Park West entrance overnight Wednesday, according to the museum and images and videos of the removal process.

The statue, by James Earle Fraser, shows the 26th U.S. president on horseback flanked by a Native American man and African man on foot. Named the “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,” it was commissioned in 1925 and unveiled in 1940 at the museum, which his father had helped found.

The museum requested the statue be removed in June 2020 as the movement for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis prompted many institutions to re-examine monuments. Owned by New York City, the statue sat on public parkland. The New York City Public Design Commission approved its removal unanimously in June 2021.
The statue, by James Earle Fraser, shows the 26th U.S. president on horseback flanked by a Native American man and African man on foot.

The statue was designed to celebrate Mr. Roosevelt as a devoted naturalist, according to the museum. “At the same time, the statue itself communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing,” the museum says on its website.

The ironies are almost limitless. Theodore Roosevelt was a war-time hero, a Naturalist and Explorer personally intimately involved in the building of the Natural History Museum’s collections, and one of the most popular presidents in American history. On top of which, Teddy (gifted, as Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, with “a first-class temperament and a second-class intellect) went all Bolshie part-way through his presidency and became a Progressive (!). Teddy qualifies as a hero and role-model to both political sides, but even that does not save his memory from the demented fanaticism and racial obsessions of the radical Left, to whom our elite Establishment misses no opportunity to grovel.

The statue is actually not in the least uncomplimentary to President Roosevelt’s native guides who are depicted, just as idealized and heroic, striding beside him into the Wilderness. Its cancellation and exile to North Dakota is simply an insane expression of the neurotic racial hypersensitivities and treasonous oikophobia of the demoniacs and crackpots making up the revolutionary Left.

How can it be, one exclaims in frustration, that today’s world is run by utter nincompoops so cowardly that they will not, and cannot, simply reject out of hand the insolent, obnoxious, and just plain stupid complaints and demands of crazy people who are addled and deranged by perverse and contemptible ideas?

The icing on the cake in all of this is the recorded and widely publicized endorsement of the statue’s removal and exile by none other than the great man’s namesake and descendant Theodore Roosevelt V.

Somewhere in Valhalla, Teddy is throwing up in the street as he contemplates what’s become of the American Aristocracy and his own bloodline.

Theodore Roosevelt V.

The Guardian reported last Fall that they were already protesting in New York to get rid of Teddy Roosevelt (and to rename Columbus Day).

Hundreds of activists gathered at the American Museum of Natural History on Monday to take down the “racist” statue of Theodore Roosevelt and an urgent call to rename Columbus Day.

More than 200 people cheered outside the museum as activists covered the statue of Roosevelt on horseback flanked by an African American and Native American on either side and demanded it be ultimately removed.

“A stark embodiment of the white supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted,” the group explained in a statement. “The statue is seen as an affront to all who pass it on entering the museum, but especially to African and Native Americans.”

Activists from the groups NYC Stands with Standing Rock and Decolonize This Place organized the protest to draw attention to the museum’s encouragement of racist tropes, and implored New York City to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.

RTWT

Spider cloth displayed at the American Museum of Natural History

Wired:

“To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.”

The project was modeled on the work of a Victorian-era French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, who invented a machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at a time.

AMNH 3:29 video

Golden silk orb-weavers (Nephila madagascariensis)

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.