When New York City removed its famous Theodore Roosevelt statue from the American Museum of Natural History, it was never meant to be taken away from the public’s eyes entirely. At least, that’s what the city’s Public Design Commission, which oversees relocation of city art, resolved in June 2021.

It said that the removal was approved only “with the understanding” that “a proposal will be submitted for the relocation via long-term loan of the artwork to a publicly-accessible site with significant connections to the life and work of Theodore Roosevelt.” 

The statue, which displays the 26th president on horseback with a Native American and an African man walking beside him, was transferred on a long-term loan to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, where, as The New York Sun has reported, it is in indefinite storage in “a safe and secure location.” 

The library has “no plans to publicly display” the statue, the library’s CEO, Ed O’Keefe, says, as part of the “Theodore Roosevelt library’s interpretive experience, or not necessarily anywhere in the next few years.” The statue’s indefinite future in storage seemingly goes against New York’s resolution to send it somewhere that is accessible to the public.

“In my experience, as a former Public Design Commission commissioner, when a work in the city’s collection was approved to be moved to an institution in a different location, the understanding was that it would be placed on public view,” a SUNY art history professor, Michele Bogart, tells the Sun. 

Ms. Bogart is a member of the Conservatory Advisory Group, which advises the city’s Public Design Commision. The library’s lack of plan to display the statue doesn’t necessarily surprise her, she says, “given the risks of further controversy, and even vandalism, that the monument might attract in this ‘fragile’ political climate.” 

There are some instances, such as the city’s removal of the J. Marion Sims statue, where art is “a political lightning rod,” and not displaying it could be a decision to “protect the artwork,” Ms. Bogart adds. 

“These institutions don’t have the resources to hire security just to watch a monument,” she says, adding that generally once New York approves the relocation of a statue, control goes to its new host. “The city can look the other way, because its concern at that point is not to have to worry about it,” Ms. Bogart says. 

The Conservation Advocacy Group’s primary role in the “massive and costly endeavor” of moving the Theodore Roosevelt statue was to ensure that the art was protected in the process, Ms. Bogart says. 

“As a private citizen, as a scholar whose work is all about the history of New York City’s public sculpture, I vehemently opposed the removal of this monument,” she adds. Yet once the decision was “a done deal,” Ms. Bogart says her job as a member of the conservation group was to make sure relocation efforts would “avoid even the slightest risk of damage to this important and outstanding sculpture.”

At the time of the statue’s removal, Theodore Roosevelt V, the former president’s great-great-grandson, said it was “fitting that the statue is being relocated to a place where its composition can be recontextualized to facilitate difficult, complex and inclusive discussions.”

In the years prior to the removal, New York’s government had difficulty reaching a consensus about the statute, as it weighed the president’s contributions as “a major figure in American history” against what some commission members feared was the statue’s “depiction of hierarchy,” of Roosevelt over Native Americans and Africans.

New York City’s government supports efforts to reckon with its history of racism and injustice, an aide to the mayor, who declined to comment on the record, tells The New York Sun. The Public Design Commission will review future plans for the statue in December, the aide says. 

The American Museum of Natural History did not respond to repeated requests from the Sun for comment.