Municipalities need to know more about controversial monuments

The report concerns monuments in public space that are linked to the Netherlands’ colonial past and to slavery (such as those commemorating the military officer J.P. Coen in Hoorn and the missionary Peerke Donders in Tilburg), and to wars and genocide (such as the Holocaust Names Monument in Amsterdam and the temporary Srebrenica Monument in The Hague). The Academy concludes that controversy regarding such monuments arises from a lack of understanding of history and imagery, location, ownership, and decision-making procedures. 

Recommendations in the report

• Take account of the history of the monument itself; the reason why and when someone or something was portrayed; and how previous generations used to think about it. The Hoorn statue of J.P. Coen – an early-17th century governor-general of the Dutch East Indies – for example, was already controversial when it was erected in 1893.
• More attention needs to be paid to form, imagery and location, making use of the expertise of artists and art historians.
• Administrators have a responsibility to organise discussions with serious involvement of all relevant parties (local residents, relatives, pressure groups). A lot of opposition arises due to a lack of communication and information.
• Municipalities should develop a policy for the "memory landscape" of their area: which statues and monuments exist and which are lacking? Deciding who should or should not be commemorated by a statue or the name of a street is a delicate matter that may also exclude certain groups.
• The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) can provide increased support in the form of a properly maintained national register of monuments, linked to a database of images and links to other municipal websites.

What should be done with controversial monuments?

Various solutions are possible:

• leave the monument as it is – this doesn't usually work;
• provide context with explanatory signboards and QR codes – this has only a limited effect;
• rename the monument or give it a different function – this often erases part of history;
• move the monument to a museum – this is possible but it happens only rarely;
• demolish the monument – this means erasing a piece of history;
• a promising approach is conceptual renewal, with the monument being provided with a new context, such as critical framing, a contrasting image, or an artistic transformation.