Theodore Roosevelt statue won’t be displayed when library opens in Medora

MEDORA, N.D. (KVRR-PRAIRIE PUBLIC) – A controversial statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt will not be displayed immediately when the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens in Medora.

The statue, called the “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,” stood outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Unveiled in 1940. It depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man on one side and a Black man on the other.

“We have no plans to publicly display it, either as part of the T.R. Library’s interpretive experience, or not necessarily anywhere in the next few years,” according to CEO Ed O’Keefe.

In June, 2020, the museum requested the statue be removed. “The statue itself communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing,” the museum wrote.

“If there is an opportunity in the future to recontextualize it, to actually put it in a place where you explicitly consent to seeing it or understanding it, then there may be an opportunity to confront that history,” O’Keefe said.

“But knowing that we have custody of the object does, I think, present an opportunity to have one of those crucially hard conversations about history and our future together.”