Don’t remove KC’s Andrew Jackson courthouse statue. Create new art to challenge it

The Andrew Jackson statue in front of the Jackson County Courthouse is no longer on public display. Because it was vandalized recently, it is now enclosed in a tarp weighted down with sandbags.

Although demands for its removal threaten whether the statue will even remain on display, the art conservation lab where I worked was asked to assess the graffiti scrawled on it. Is the vandalism reversible? That question might be deemed premature by those who want the statue torn down in the first place. But as an art conservationist, I know there’s more to consider about what to preserve and why.

Art has a slippery definition and is no longer limited to high-quality, handmade or even material objects. How can an unsettling viewing of a projection of Carolee Schneemann’s “Meat Joy” (a performance piece in which entangled, scantily clad performers writhe in raw meat) take place in the same museum where Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is on display, as happened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1964? It is the dialogue across time and between artists that unifies them. Artists use works from the past to contextualize contemporary pieces. Because of this dialogue, art conservation is essential to the current production of art.

A conservator’s role is to present the artwork as the artist intended it to be seen. By upholding the artist’s intent, new artists can incorporate others’ work into their own. If a conservator damages the artist’s original intent, viewers begin engaging with a facsimile. Given the importance of this connection to previous artists, we should begin our evaluation of the Andrew Jackson statue with a historical backdrop.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, public sculpture was rich and plentiful throughout Europe, but nowhere to be seen here in the United States, as the nation did not yet have a foundry suitable for artists’ casting techniques. Our early American artists had to train in Europe to gain expertise.

One of the earliest notable American sculptors was Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who built many monuments throughout New York City and the East Coast. While completing the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston, Saint-Gaudens took on an assistant, Charles Keck, sculptor of Kansas City’s now-controversial statue of Jackson.

The Jackson statue was installed when the courthouse opened in 1934, during a critical period in American art history in which our nation had finally attained the instruction, resources and funding necessary to thrive artistically. Artists no longer had to travel to Europe to get firsthand experience with high-quality works of art. Funded by the New Deal, many murals and monuments became accessible to the masses as part of their daily routines.

Keck’s figure is not one of the mass-produced Confederate memorials masquerading as art that were installed around the country during the post-Civil War Jim Crow era. This is an individually sculpted work that showcases the artistic capabilities of a significant American artist.

When I look at the statue, I notice the breeze swaying the horse’s tail to the side, creating a sense of motion and a caught-in-the-moment sentiment. I see the detail captured through Jackson’s uniform and the passages where the metal is handled so sensitively, it communicates the texture and feel of leather through the boots, the gloves and the horse’s reins. I notice the telescope clutched in Jackson’s right hand and his gaze into the distance — formal qualities that put this piece in direct conversation with The Farragut, one of Saint-Gauden’s statues in New York’s Central Park. Keck’s statue has artistic merit.

A recent Star editorial presented an insightful view into Jackson’s disreputable history, which makes his memorialization unfit in a society that is still struggling with racism. I acknowledge that a courthouse — a space where justice is supposed to be blind — is an entirely inappropriate location for a commemoration of the seventh president. He is a problematic figure and these shortcomings need to be addressed.

But when Keck’s statue was vandalized and when it is called to be removed, the artistic merits of the work are ignored. Instead of destroying it, or removing it from its inappropriate location (an act that would alter the artist’s original intent), we should allocate funding for additional public art to be made that challenges Jackson’s (and America’s) troubling history.

We should not try to undo the past by removing statues. We should focus our efforts on becoming better. Rather than try to correct, use the power of public art to establish a dialogue — the way all art is supposed to.

Karri Vaughn of Olathe works in art conservation with a professional background in analytical chemistry, studio art and art history.

This story was originally published July 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM.