Chicago Park District to loan Columbus statue to Italian American group for museum, end lawsuit
The Chicago Park District said Thursday that it has reached a deal to end a lawsuit over the removal of Chicago's Christopher Columbus statues.
The City of Chicago, which owns the statues, will not be bringing the statues back to their former sites in Grant Park and Arrigo Park. But the city will loan the statue that was removed from Arrigo Park, at Polk and Loomis streets in Little Italy, to the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans.
The statue will be displayed inside a building in Chicago that the joint civic committee is redeveloping to be a museum. The museum is set to open in six months, Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans President Ron Onesti told CBS News Chicago.
Meanwhile, the Columbus statue that once stood in Grant Park will not be back. The plinth that had anchored the statue will be removed, and a new process will determine what piece of public art will replace it.
Rather than Columbus, an Italian American will be honored at Arrigo Park, according the Park District. Onesti said this statue would depict "a person of Italian descent such as Mother Cabrini."
"The Chicago Park District is committed to diversifying our statuary to ensure we are honoring Chicago's rich history and diversity," said Chicago Park District Genera Supt. and Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said in a news release. "To that end, we look forward to convening the process to determine which Italian American will be honored at Arrigo Park, and which artworks will replace the Grant Park plinth. Throughout these processes, we will continue to engage Chicago's diverse communities."
Back in 2020, then-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had the Grant Park and Arrigo Park Columbus statues — and one more in South Chicago — taken down. For all the time since, Italian American groups in the city had been fighting to put them back.
This came after a group of protesters clashed with police officers at the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park on July 17, 2020. Some of the protesters tried to wrap a rope around the statue and tear it down.
A week later, the Grant Park Columbus statue was removed, to the cheers of people who said monuments to Columbus are insults to Indigenous Americans. The Columbus statue in Arrigo Park, and another one that was part of a fountain at 92nd Street and Exchange Avenue, followed soon afterward.
In August 2022, a panel created by Mayor Lightfoot called the Chicago Monuments Project recommended that the three Columbus statues should be removed permanently — along with several other public monuments they deemed as "problematic" on the grounds that they honor white supremacy or disrespect Indigenous people. No other monuments have been removed in the years since.
The choices to find a new public artwork for the Grant Park space is in accordance with the Chicago Monuments Project recommendations, the Park District said.
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