Making and breaking monuments in American

“Pulling Down the Statue of King George III’’ (oil on canvas), by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, in the show “Monuments: Commemorations and Controversy,’’ Sept. 19-Dec. 20, at the Fairfield (Conn.) University Art Museum.

The museum says the show “explores monuments and their representations in public spaces as flashpoints of fierce debate over national identity, politics and race that have raged for centuries. Offering a historical foundation for understanding today’s controversies, the exhibition includes, besides the image above, such things as “a souvenir replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, and a maquette of New York City’s first public monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman, among other objects from The New York Historical's collection. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered and removed.