Whether it’s a mural on the side of a building or a sculpture in a park, public art is everywhere in Milwaukee. There’s the iconic Bronze Fonz, the Giannis mural downtown and the orange sunburst overlooking the lake. But public art tends to emphasize some pieces of history over others.
WUWM delves into this in a new series, Reflections of Representation.
We begin by taking a walk in Juneau Park, just north of downtown Milwaukee, overlooking Lake Michigan. If you’ve been here, you’ve probably seen the bronze statue of the Norse explorer Leif Erikson. Standing eight feet tall, he looks like he’s scanning the land from the top of his red stone pedestal. He wears armor with breastplates and a studded belt.
This sculpture is one of the oldest in Milwaukee. It was created by Anne Whitney and was erected in 1887.
John Riepenhoff is the CEO of Sculpture Milwaukee. He says public art is an integral part of a city.
"When we have something that's a little out of the ordinary that we experience during the day, we know that people will congregate there and it creates a certain sense of collective identity," Riepenhoff says.
If you keep walking through Juneau Park, you will see another statue nearby. It’s a monument dedicated to Solomon Juneau, Milwaukee’s first mayor, for whom the park is named. Like the Erikson statue, it was also erected in 1887.
An inscription on the Leif Erikson monument reads—<i>Leif, the discoverer, son of Erik, who sailed from Iceland and landed on this continent.
The monument has two bronze carvings. One shows Juneau standing in a room of men as he is elected to Congress. The other shows Juneau meeting with a group of indigenous people. A plaque on the side of the monument recognizes him as the first white settler of Milwaukee.
Riepenhoff, with Sculpture Milwaukee, says these monuments reflect a narrow version of history.
"When I grew up," Riepenhoff says. "I saw public sculpture in Milwaukee as something of the past. We see a sculpture of Leif Erikson and these older sculptures where you have a monument of some figure on a big pedestal that talks about a literary, military or a political or a cultural narrative."
This is part of a larger trend with monuments across the country.
Paul Farber is the director of Monument Lab, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia. In September 2021, they published their National Monument Audit, analyzing monuments across the United States. They found the top 50 historical figures represented by monuments were mostly white and male. Only five of the top 50 are Black or Indigenous.
"And of those top 50 figures, only three of them were women," Farber explains. "Of those women, you have Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Sacajawea. There were no US-born Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, or self-identified LGBTQ+ people. Half of that top 50 claimed ownership over other human beings."
In recent years, there’s been a movement to take down Confederate monuments.
Farber’s project also reveals the most common themes among American monuments are war and conquest. Farber’s conclusion is that our monuments misrepresent American history by telling it from a narrow perspective.
For example, Erikson’s statue is officially named Leif, the Discoverer. Many have criticized depicting European explorers like Erikson as discoverers of North America, saying it erases the Indigenous people who were already living here. And with Solomon Juneau, some local groups like the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society and Marquette University’s Indigeneity Lab have advocated for Juneau’s wife, Josette Juneau, to be recognized along with her husband.
Cultural critic Salamishah Tillet, who worked with Farber on the Monument Audit, says that monuments made of bronze and granite don’t allow historical figures and the way that we see them to evolve.
"An eternal heroism is often attached to monuments, despite the fact that they're created in a certain moment in time when certain people are interpreting that past as such and other people may simultaneously be harmed by that interpretation," Tillet says.
So this is the problem—public art in Milwaukee and beyond often tells an antiquated, incomplete story. Coming up in Reflections of Representation, we’ll talk about solutions. Including how murals have helped paint a vibrant picture of Milwaukee.
