« A Horse’s Tail: The Material Afterlives of Iconoclasm”, Séminaire HAR/LARCA : Wendy Bellion, Professor of Art History and Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art at the University of Delaware, Terra Foundation

On the night of July 9, 1776, a crowd emboldened by a public reading of the Declaration of Independence pulled a huge equestrian statue of George III from its pedestal at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. If the monument was destroyed, however, it was not forgotten. It endured in the form of new visual representations as well as numerous fragments that were remade into new objects or treasured as relics of the original statue. The decapitated head was returned to London as a demonstration of American rebelliousness; many of the fragments went to Connecticut, where the statue was melted down and recast as ammunition for American soldiers. En route, loyalists absconded with pieces of the statue, concealing them in fields, swamps, and cellars. In the nineteenth century, these fragments began reappearing, finding their way into historical societies and museums. Even the pedestal of the statue survived for several decades; over time, it was reconceived as a monument to the American Revolution. This presentation will consider the ways that iconoclasm endures in the national imaginary through the objects that survive, registering the material presence of long-ago acts of destruction and generatively yielding new historical narratives.