To the Editor:
In response to Douglass Dowty’s article on the Onondaga Nation’s court appeal in the Columbus Monument Corp.’s case against Mayor BenWalsh’s decision to dismantle and take down the 1934 monument (”Onondaga Nation wants appellate court’s attention on Syracuse Columbus statue: ‘Fundamentally offensive, ’ “ Dec. 23, 2022):
There are a number of inaccuracies in lawyer Joseph Heath’s facts and interpretation.
I find it mindboggling that because . Heath finds something personally offensive and has projected his animosity into others related to the Columbus Monument — that he feels a court of law should sanction to destroy it. Those are Heath’s words. If courts of law started to take cases based on subjective and often spurious, emotional reactions to events and public controversies, there would no time in a courtroom’s purview for true and warranted justice.
Heath decries what he calls “disembodied indigenous heads” that should be taken down from the monument. His use of pejorative, negative language is inaccurate, in artists’ terms. Those are artistic “masks,” not heads, so defined by artists over thousands of years as creations of honor. Sculptor Renzo Baldi meant to honor the Indigenous having them facing in all four directions. The “frescoes” he describes as also offensive aren’t frescoes at all. They are bronze bas reliefs.
One bas relief shows Columbus bringing a Christian cross onto San Salvador — the first landing in the Western Hemisphere Columbus made. His men are kneeling because of the cross. The Indigenous are standing. The second bas relief Heath wants taken down is the presentation of six Indigenous men to the King and Queen of Spain. hat is not a servile action, but an artist’s rendering showing respect to Spain’s royalty. That is an act of respect that still exists today. There are other paintings of that moment whereby Columbus is on his knees bowing to the King and Queen and others are standing on the side. No camera ever existed at that time to really know what exactly happened.
It is surprising that Heath is only concerned with the Columbus Monument and the 1794 treaty that once promised land to the Indigenous of our area as affecting ownership. City Hall stands on the same land, as does every one of the historically preserved edifices that are in proximity to the Columbus Monument.
One needs only to read on page one of “A Guide to Public Art in Downtown Syracuse,” published by the Syracuse Downtown Committee, to understand the value of the Columbus Monument. Just below a picture of one of the four indigenous masks it reads on page one: “Masks of Native American faces surround the Christopher Columbus Monument by Renzo Baldi celebrating the people who were already in America when Columbus arrived.” This was Baldi’s true intention. Heath created a fiction to suit his own subjective narrative.
Christopher Columbus died in 1506, only 14 years after reaching the Western Hemisphere in 1492. Ironically on his death bed he thought that he landed in the outlying Japanese islands off the coast of China. He never realized that he had ventured into the Western Hemisphere. Yet 530 years later he is blamed for every negative element occurring in the Western Hemisphere, Northern and Southern — over the course of five centuries.
From the Downtown Committee’s guide: “Public art often reflects a moment in time, a slice of the past and the emotion of an occasion or circumstance. Peering into the eyes of a figure cast in bronze deepens our perspetive. Studying the abstract form opens the mind to endless possibilities …”
Mr. Heath, “A little learning is a dangerous thing — drink deep or taste not of the Pierian Spring.” — Alexander Pope
Robert Gardino
Syracuse
The writer is a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s decision to remove the Columbus Monument.
