Crouch, Sabina. ‘Must Rhodes Fall? Differing Responses to Contentious Monumental Public Art.’. Knowledge Commons, 2025. https://doi.org/10.17613/maf56-y2d45. Originally authored in September 2016.

Summary

• The paper focuses on the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaigns that took place in the United Kingdom and South Africa from March 2015 which were centred on a pair of statues depicting the British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, and which called for the removal of the statues from Oriel College Oxford and the University of Cape Town.
• The paper explores:
  • The way in which the works operate within their respective contexts
  • Frameworks for the formation of collective memory, and how these can be applied the Cecil Rhodes statues in Oxford and Cape Town
  • The extent to which the works consolidate the reproduction of dominant cultural values
• In particular, the paper derives fascinating novel commentary on the relationship between collective memory and Imagined Communities.
  • The anthropological theory mapped to real responses to the art gives us tangible insight into human behaviour
• The paper concludes that the differing responses to the "Rhodes Must Fall" campaigns reveal the dominant values of the respective universities, the countries in which they sit, and the impression that they want to project both within their institutions and to the wider world.
• The Oriel College Oxford case in particular presents a response to contentious monumental public art that effectively balances both historical fact and contemporary values.

Epistemic Status

I provide a summary with key points from the dissertation alongside my takeaways, keeping things light and engaging!

I'm a data scientist with a deep interest in AI alignment, neuroscience, and accurate world modelling. I have moderate confidence in my statements but errors are possible.

I spent 10 hours deeply reading the paper, performing supplementary research, and drafting notes. I spent 2 hours writing up notes. A sizeable component of my review is curated sections of the paper for a streamlined narrative, where I don't add much commentary as I feel the paper speaks for itself.

The author of the paper is my mother! I wrote the first draft of this review prior to speaking with her about the paper.

Abstract

From the paper:

The following paper discusses the Rhodes Must Fall campaigns that took place in the United Kingdom and South Africa from March 2015. The two campaigns centred on a pair of statues depicting the British colonialist Cecil Rhodes and called for the removal of the statues from Oriel College Oxford and the University of Cape Town.

The paper will consider whether the removal of contentious public art is the only method by which to address concerns about such works. I will consider the way in which the works operate in relation to their reception by audiences, their role in providing frameworks for the formation of collective memory and the extent to which they consolidate the reproduction of dominant cultural values. In addition I shall consider how the Rhodes Must Fall campaigns relate to previous examples of iconoclastic behaviour.

Spoiler: I think the paper is profoundly brilliant.^[1]

I aspire to use layered self-referentialism in the way that the author manages in the paper — with such humility that it’s barely perceptible:

1. Rhodes in post-colonial UCT in South Africa, former-colonial Oriel in Great Britain
2. The connection to the author's mother, both from the South Africa/UK split and asserting the value of lieux de mémoire^[2]

I'm fascinated by the concept of a permanent tension that exists between "truth-seeking" and "social norms". This paper is the first time I’ve really understood what it means to be “iconoclastic”.

The Art

Visual stimulation:

Introduction

Crouch begins with interesting framing:

I shall examine how responses and reactions to the campaigns can illuminate different attitudes towards contentious monumental art within different contexts. These two case studies provide an instructive contrast for such a study for the following reasons. The focuses of both campaigns are statues of the same subject, set within the same institutional context and there are strong parallels in the commissioning of the work; in particular in the role of Rhodes as a benefactor/patron.

However, geographically we are presented with two very distinctive locations. These differences are both international - UCT is in a post-colonial country, while Oriel College is in a former colonial power - and local – the South African statue is set within the university campus and so access by the general public is limited, [while] the Oxford statue faces onto one of the most high-profile streets in the city.

I believe the research is particularly important as despite focusing on protest campaigns from March 2015, the mechanisms explored are timeless:

Examining [responses over time] may reveal how changing audience response is paralleled by changes in cultural values within audiences.

Central interrogative tools are called out — readers should be excited to see how they are used:

Central to this research will be notions of collective memory and ideas surrounding reception theory, together with an exploration of how the Rhodes Must Fall campaigns fit within the wider landscape of iconoclasm.

The line of enquiry is set — why were the responses different?

I seek to demonstrate how much the respective responses of UCT and Oriel College owe to cultural values, audience response or protection of ‘valuable’ works... and how much their decisions can be attributed to other factors.

Introducing the Works

An introductory premise:

The study of architectural history [when applied to the] process by which buildings are commissioned is made more straightforward by [considering] the nature of the institution. As the process is overseen by self-contained committees within the individual colleges, architects are often required to present a clear vision of their projects, in particular with respect to how they ‘fit’ the character of the college.

What this means is that we can better understand historical context of the building by considering a Bayesian: the work was commissioned conditional on its approval from college committees.

In fact, in this case we don’t even need to speculate about the college motives:

In addition, most colleges retain detailed archives where the minutiae of the planning process are often to be found – this is certainly the case for Oriel.

We learn some historical context about Cecil Rhodes, besides his position as a British imperialist.

Cecil Rhodes attended Oriel College intermittently between 1873 and 1881, taking 8 years to complete his degree due to frequent trips to South Africa. In 1892 an honorary degree had been offered to Rhodes but he was unable to accept this until 1899 when he returned to Oxford. It should be noted that even at this stage Rhodes was a controversial figure with some of the University Proctors threatening to veto the conferral of this degree.

Rhodes Building (Oriel College Oxford)

Crouch connects Rhodes to the sensitive statue that is one of subjects of this study, situated in Oxford:

On his death in 1902 Rhodes left £100,000 to Oriel College. While most of it was used to ensure the financial security of the college, and some dedicated to setting up what would become known as Rhodes Scholarships, £22,500 was specifically given for the extension of the college buildings to the High St. The architect given the task of designing the new building was Basil Champneys who had already worked on several Oxford University buildings. 

An interesting insight, possibly suggesting that the artists’ desired representation of the subject is at odds with Gothic themes:

Champneys’ main aim was to create a building that was in keeping with the existing buildings although he rejected suggestions that the new building should be in the Gothic style.

Featured as a centrepiece of the building was a statue of Cecil Rhodes. Crouch suggests based on archival records that:

Whilst the evidence seems to point towards H.A. Pegram being the sculptor, the lack of definitive and well publicised  accreditation points to the idea that the work was never considered particularly important either historically or artistically.

When the opening of the ‘new building’ took place on 29th September 1911:

The building itself… was not universally loved, with Evelyn Waugh suggesting that the use of dynamite would be all that was needed to ‘rid us forever of the High Street front of Oriel’. A foretaste maybe of the continuing controversy that the building and its statue would continue to generate into the twenty-first century.

Statue of Cecil John Rhodes (University of Cape Town)

Crouch takes us to Cape Town:

There are some parallels to be found between the evolution of the Rhodes Building and the statue that would be erected in memory of Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (UCT) campus.

We learn of two Rhodes sculptures predating the UCT work:

In 1910 a sculpture by H.A. Pegram was unveiled in what was intended to be a temporary site in Company’s Gardens. Further discussions took place and the permanent Rhodes Memorial, designed by architect Sir Herbert Baker, was dedicated by Earl Grey in 1912. The Rhodes Memorial sits on Devil’s Peak, above the UCT campus, on land formerly owned by Rhodes.

UCT wanted to jump on the bandwagon:

In 1931 the principal of UCT contacted the Honorary Secretary of the Rhodes Memorial Fund to open discussions on the possibility of the erection of a statue within the university campus itself.

Three years later:

The statue [sculpted by artist Marion Walgate] was unveiled on 7 March 1934 by the then Governor-General of South Africa, the 6th Earl of Clarendon. The sculpture was bronze and portrayed Rhodes sitting on a bench looking over the landscape. The figure of Rhodes was 1½ times life size and sat on a marble plinth positioned above Rhodes Drive.

My mother muses:

Figure 2 shows Marion Walgate standing alongside her work, and as can be seen there is more than a nod to the late nineteenth-century French artist Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. In 1962 the statue was moved to a position above the rugby fields, where it remained until protests calling for its removal became more vocal.

Comparing the two works

Four parallels are called out:

What we have here then are a pair of statues not only of Cecil Rhodes but also sited at locations intimately connected with his life. Both occupy, or occupied, positions that were dependent on Rhodes’ bequests for their existence and were commissioned as a result of a desire by their patrons to mark Rhodes’ contribution to the institution at which they resided.

And Crouch describes:

At this point it is useful to consider where the works sit in a taxonomy of artworks:

1. Neither statue could be considered traditional “high art” (although “much of the argument around retention of the Oxford statue centred around its position on an architecturally important building“)
2. Neither works have attracted any scholarship concerned with their aesthetic value
3. Walgate was a little known artist, while Pegram was a highly regarded sculptor in his time (although “the Rhodes statue was frequently omitted from lists of his works”)
4. The works form part of the canon of public art, specifically monumental public art.

Crouch explores the distinction, or lack of distinction, between “public art” and “monuments”:

Malcolm Miles implies a distinction between the categories of ‘public art’ and ‘monuments’, although accepts that they may perform similar functions. Miles both refers to a ‘commonality’ between public art and monuments and draws attention to William Mitchell’s tendency to use the two terms interchangeably, indicating that he, Miles, feels they are distinct categories.

Crouch contends:

I feel that this is a false distinction. Both statues were commissioned for specific sites within the public realm, and while contemporary definitions may stress the centrality of community involvement in public art, we should also acknowledge that definitions evolve over time and in the lexicon of the early twentieth century these are public artworks. I would also argue that this is how they are seen in the eyes of the audience, who have no access to the details of how works are developed but judge them on their location within the public realm.

Multiple Viewers / Multiple Memories: The Role and Reception of Monumental Public Art

In the words of Crouch:

Having suitably positioned the works as monuments I shall now consider how this impacts on their function and the way in which they are received by viewers.

Crouch states:

Public monumental art operates not only to mark events or the lives of notable people, but also to shape collective community memory. Where such works are sited within institutions, such as universities, they also serve to reproduce the values of the institutions by explicitly linking with them with the memorable events or people portrayed. This, as we shall see, may cause problems over time as changing political and social conditions impact upon attitudes towards those memorialized.

This raises an interesting general question — how should we handle memories when conditions have materially changed since those memories were formed?

Sites of memory

My mother frames this beautifully, detailing:

Statues such as the ones under discussion may be considered to fall into the category of what the historian Pierre Nora called lieux de mémoire (or sites of memory). These were defined by Nora as:

"Any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community”

[The works] exist as “sites of memory” because of the elimination of milieux de mémoire, or environments of memory.

I continue just extracting verbatim because this section is particularly fascinating:

Nora contrasts traditional societies, where memories are perpetuated through ritual and oral history, with modern societies where these rituals have broken down. In the latter lieux de mémoire take the place of the living memories of the former. The distinction between the two is the difference between memory, which is authentic and lived, and history which is a reconstruction of something that no longer exists.

What I take from this is an implied precedence of sites of memory, by virtue of the timeliness of their representation. Therefore the opponents to the Rhodes statues are those who see greater value in removing a dated memory, than allowing the dated memory to persist in addition to the normative memories of the current moment.

Their motivation is that:

[Keeping the statues] is an indication that the colonial legacy in both the UK and in South Africa is considered to be an integral part of the heritage of the university. More than this, the uncritical nature of the statues in relation to Rhodes would imply that this heritage is seen as positive.

Collective memory

Next we learn more about frameworks for memory, this time seen as a “collective activity”:

Nora’s work builds on the ideas of the psychologist Maurice Halbwachs who outlined a theory of collective memory. Halbwachs suggested that although elements of memory are individual, all memories are created within social frameworks. In On Collective Memory (1992) Halbwachs discusses memory formation within families, religious groups and social classes but his theories can equally be applied to nations, or indeed university communities. As memory formation is, in Halbwachs mind, a collective activity, it is instrumental in the formation of group identities.

Quick aside: It’d be remiss of me not to connect this to my own ruminations on AI. AI is trained on data (or “memories”) including context across generations of human society. Should we not expect it to strongly identify with humanity? Moreover, as humans continue to interact with AI, is this same mechanism not bidirectional?

Crouch continues in a way that we could continue to use to draw parallels with human-AI integration, detailing a feedback loop:

When individuals belong to a particular group, or indeed join that group, they form their memories within that group’s framework. So for Halbwachs individuals’ memories are amalgams of actual lived memories set within the wider framework of the group. This framework shapes the memories which in turn become part of the framework that shapes further memories. In the same way that notable personal events are remembered and shaped within families, so public monuments serve to ‘remember’ and shape public memories.

This is profoundly brilliant, in ways that I cannot hope to add more meaningful commentary to.

Crouch goes on:

The choice of what is memorialised in the public sphere then becomes an instrument by which to construct the memories of the communities in which they are displayed. Memories are given material form, consumed by publics and then integrated into their memory.

It’s a clear, salient mechanism.

Imagined communities

For public monuments then this mechanism becomes instrumental in constructing national identity:

In Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson described how the process of creating nations has taken place over time, in particular following the emergence of the modern nation-state. Anderson was primarily concerned with the role of language, in both its spoken and written form, in the creation and reinforcement of national identity, exploring how the emergence of mass publication of works in the vernacular allowed common languages to develop across nations connecting hitherto unconnected individuals in this common tongue. However Anderson opened his work with a discussion of the role of a specific form of public art; cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers.

Anderson’s focus on monuments with a specific memorial function underlines a key purpose of monuments as a whole, as evinced in the etymological root of the word ‘monument’, that is they exist to commemorate. Commemoration however is not a neutral act. As societies do not memorialize everyone and everything, the choice of who and what to memorialize then can be seen as an act that can tell us much about the values that those societies consider important and wish to promote and preserve.“

Along these lines Crouch highlights a suggestion from Malcolm Miles that public art and monuments “define and make visible the values of the public realm…in a way which is far from neutral”, and further that “monumentalism, in particular that of the nineteenth-century, is one way in which societies exercise hegemonic power by presenting only one approved version of national memory”.

Crouch caveats:

Having said that, and before moving to look at how the Rhodes’ structures may be ‘read’ by audiences, it must be acknowledged that the choice of who to remember in both these instances was primarily driven by the fact that both works were commissioned following the bequest by the subject, that is Rhodes himself.

Hence posthumous capital of the Rhodes estate was a driving force behind monumentalising, vs. nation-state motives.

Crouch calls out that we will also need to consider the function of monuments to “act as a reminder to passersby” and form of “often containing an affixed written message”.

Nuance to this interpretation

Crouch highlights the contradiction between “acknowledging that a national collective memory exists, while simultaneously acknowledging the existence of collective memories formed within religious, familial or social class frameworks”.

In actuality:

These groups intersect, with individuals inhabiting more than one at a time, and these individuals also may move within groups, for example in the case of social mobility. This seems to suggest multiple layers of collective memory which are activated by the individual in relation to the framework in which they are created.

However, this gives us a framework to use for interpretation: 

We would then need to consider how memory is formed where these frameworks are in opposition.

This becomes a crux of the Rhodes Must Fall issue:

The campaigns seem to suggest that the response is to attempt to reshape the framework in an attempt to produce an alternative collective memory, and we shall see later how the campaigns sought to address wider issues than the work itself by focussing the work as a symbol of a particular set of values.

There is yet more nuance to this:

The values of a dominant group, in these cases the university authority, can be replaced by another group’s values by removing the symbolic markers of the former. This in itself highlights another difficulty with the notion of collective memory. By emphasising the collective meaning of works this outlook may have a tendency to diminish the role of individual agency in the way in which people respond to and read, in this case monumental public, art and how they subsequently relate their response to their sense of self, either as citizens or part of an institutional body.

This leads us to:

Theories of reception

Crouch explains reception theory in its literary sense as considering meaning “at the point in which the reader and text interact” instead of “within the text”, and in art history as considering “how viewers perceive artworks and the way in which works may themselves position viewers in order to facilitate preferred readings”.

This “challenges the notion that monumental public art can effectively reproduce cultural values” since inherent in reception theory is the idea that there can be “multiple readings” and work may not “reliably reproduce values”.

However, Crouch proposes that we can use a framework for reception aesthetics from The Work of Art and Its Beholder, Wolfgang Kemp which takes as assumption that an “ideal beholder” for the work exists and that “the function of beholding has already been incorporated into the work itself”.

Rhodes Building (Oriel College Oxford)

Since the Oxford Rhodes statue is given the highest position on the most prominent side of The Rhodes Building, the impression is given to the viewer that “it is Rhodes to whom the viewer should attend most. Rhodes is depicted among a collection of kings, former provosts of Oriel College and a sixteenth-century cardinal. Even if the viewer is not familiar with who these individuals are, their rank is suggested by their clothes, whether robes of state or academic gowns”.

An interesting discrepancy:

Rhodes on the other hand is in ‘everyday’ clothing and rather than standing to formal attention like the others, he seems to stride from his plinth. What might this tell the viewer about Rhodes? That this ‘ordinary’ man attained a higher position, both literally and figuratively, than the others perhaps?

The inscription gives us valuable clues as to the “ideal beholder”: despite being viewable to the general public by way of facing the High Street, the inscription being in Latin and an obscure chronogram suggest an intention for the work to be primarily beholden by those who are “educated”.

Statue of Cecil John Rhodes (University of Cape Town)

Similarly, the inscription of the UCT statue provides clues as to the target audience.

It reads:

CECIL JOHN RHODES

1853-1902

‘I dream my dream

By rock and heath and pine,

Of empire to the Northward

Ay, one land

From Lion’s Head to Line’

Rudyard Kipling

Crouch calls out that:

Kipling was described by the British novelist George Orwell as ‘the prophet of British Imperialism in its expansionist phase’. Thus while the inscription itself makes no direct reference to British imperialism, it is difficult to think of a writer whose work could be seen to lend more support to colonial values than Kipling.

We can also consider the ideal beholder from the setting on campus: 

UCT [started] accepting black students from the 1920s, however the number of black students admitted remained comparatively small until the 1980s and 1990s… the majority of those viewing the statue, that is students from the white minority, would find these colonial values unproblematic.

Crouch balances this by highlighting that:

Even within this apparently homogenous audience, disagreement still occurred about how appropriate the statue was. Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson define another group of “empirical spectators” who are the actual audiences who view the works, and thus who may disagree with the “ideal spectator”.

Crouch calls out even deeper nuance:

Bal and Bryson also suggest, following the art historian Nikos Hadjinicolaou, that “the work in the present bears within in it the history of all previous interactions that it has had with viewers” which means that “the Rhodes statues can only be understood in the present by considering how they have been viewed in the past, by all audiences”. This may rewrite them then as not just carriers of dominant cultural values but also as sites of resistance to those very values.

The form of the statue implies projected values:

By so closely resembling Rodin’s The Thinker, Walgate evokes notions of classicism, continuity and tradition.

Even further:

Unlike the Oxford statue, [the UCT statue] makes no reference to the fact that it was erected following a bequest from Rhodes himself. Here then the man, and the associated values of the British Empire, are presented as being worthy of commemoration in and of themselves, rather than because Rhodes made a donation to the university. The presentation of Rhodes in this uncritical way in turn implies that the university shares those values.

Tearing Down the Statues

Crouch describes the Rhodes Must Fall campaigns as political iconoclasm “seen as a signifier of a larger process of ‘decolonising’ the academic space, both literal and figurative, in which they sat“.

Crouch delineates two broad forms of political iconoclasm

1. Spontaneous, violent destruction (for example “the destruction of a statue of Stalin by a crowd during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Bagdad’s Firdos Square by Iraqi civilians and American soldiers following the invasion of Iraq in 2003” or, more recently, “the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS forces in late 2015”
2. A “more official form of iconoclasm after regime change, whereby new governments actively remove the material reminders of their predecessors”. Two of the most prominent examples of this are the denazification of Germany following World War Two, and the removal of statues of Soviet leaders in former Soviet Bloc countries after the fall of communism.

An interesting call-out:

The extent to which the monumental landscape may reflect or define dominant cultural or political values may be evidenced by Sergiusz Michalski’s observation that, whilst statues of Lenin have survived in some places within the former Soviet Union, none seem to remain beyond her borders. Interestingly monuments dedicated to Marx do remain, perhaps reflecting his position as a political philosopher who transcends ideas purely related to the former Soviet state. The removal of monuments continues, with Ukraine currently in the process of removing all Soviet symbols from the country following Russian intervention in the country from 2014.

Statue of Cecil John Rhodes (University of Cape Town)

Applying this to South Africa:

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, the Republic of South Africa also found itself in the position of considering how to deal with the monumental legacies of previous years. These monuments include not only those erected during the apartheid era, but also those constructed during British colonial rule, such as the Rhodes statue, and monuments, such as the Voortrekker Monument, marking key moments in Boer history.

Examining how monuments were treated:

Sabine Marschall in Landscape of Memory, Commemorative monuments, memorials and public statuary in post-apartheid South-Africa (2010) [describes] collective memory being shaped by omission [where] a 1969 act of parliament led to the creation of the National Monuments Council (NMC) which, by the end of the twentieth century, had designated around 3500 sites or buildings as National Monuments... but it has been calculated that around 97% of these were related to the ‘values and experiences of the white minority’... reinforcing the idea of an ‘uncivilized’ black majority with no worthwhile material culture.

This makes it understandable then that:

Many black people in South Africa call for the removal of ‘white monuments’ regardless of whether or not they are aware of the intended meaning or not, possibly in an attempt to redress the balance and in doing so question the legitimacy of the dominant values that placed those monuments into the public realm.

However —

Rather than a widespread destruction of works, the approach has leant towards preservation and reinterpretation of existing monuments, set alongside the commissioning of new works [which both]:

1. Reflects the socio-political climate, for example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the focus is on mutual respect of different cultures within South Africa, and
2. May be considered a tactical move… internally with respect to placating potential political opponents, and externally in order to reassure international investors.

Crouch calls out a successful re-interpretation being the addition of an education and visitor centre at the Voortrekker Monument: many tours are conducted by black tour guides, black school groups visit the site, and “there has been a softening in the attitude of previously antagonistic audiences”.

We learn also that:

One method of reinterpretation that has been given little consideration in South Africa is the use of statue parks. Here works, particularly statues, are moved to a purpose built ‘museum’. The most famous of these is probably Memento Park in Hungary, which houses a collection of 42 statues from the Soviet-era… there was a proposal to relocate some of the monuments that had been removed from public display in Pretoria, placing them in a central location and combining them with new statues of heroes of the apartheid struggle. However this was never implemented, largely because of a lack of support from both sides, with neither side willing to share space with the other.

Rhodes Building (Oriel College Oxford)

Crouch highlights the different political landscape in the UK:

Whilst governments have changed, there has not, in recent times been any great rupture from the past such as those seen in Germany, the former Soviet Union or the Republic of South Africa.

A caveat:

That is not to say that there have not been examples of iconoclasm. In the early twentieth century members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the Suffragettes, took part in a number of attacks upon artworks. Arguably though, unlike previous examples the subjects of the works were less important than their location, with the protestors largely confining their attacks to works situated within galleries, with these galleries representing the power of the state.

In general though:

The relatively stable recent history of the United Kingdom means that there has never been the need for any official programme for the removal or reinterpretation of public monuments. Rather, the climate has been one of conservation. The legislative protection of public monuments in the UK can be traced back to at least 1854, when the Public Statues Act was passed as a response to attacks on statues in London.

Considering recent examples:

[Those], such as the call to remove a statue of the slaver Edward Colston from its position in Bristol city centre, are generally met with objections from the majority of local residents.

Indeed, in recent years, the only high-profile example of the large-scale removal of statues or memorials to any prominent figure to have taken place in the UK is the removal of those dedicated to, or depicting, the late disc jockey, Jimmy Savile. Following accusations of multiple cases of sexual abuse against Savile, councils and other bodies moved quickly to remove monuments. This was echoed by removal of Savile’s images from other media, specifically television recordings, and can be seen as a pre-emptive attempt to remove recollections of him as anything other than a serial sex offender from the collective public memory.

Crouch concludes:

It seems them that unless a publicly remembered figure’s transgressions are very fresh the tendency is to leave monuments in place.

Rhodes Must Fall in Cape Town and Oxford: Campaign Details

Crouch describes the campaigns — my key takeaways being:

Cape Town

• Campaigners argued that Rhodes was ‘undeniably a racist, imperialist, colonialist, and misogynist’ and that the statue glorified this man who had ‘exploited black labour and stole land from indigenous people’
• The campaign was not purely about the removal of a statue — it was part of an ongoing process to decolonialise the university (including other changes such as curriculum updates)
• The rationale for focusing on the statue was the perception, by campaigners, that it possessed ‘symbolic power’.
  • Note that this fits Barber and Boldrick’s definition of iconoclasm: an attack that is not mindless destruction, but has purpose.

Oxford

• Oxford campaigners also drew attention to other ‘colonial iconography’ such as plaques and paintings which they claim ‘distort history’
• The Oxford campaign also, compared to the Cape Town campaign, appeared much more cognisant of some of the debates surrounding works such as the Rhodes statue, stating that ‘we believe that statues and symbols matter; they are a means through which communities express their values’
• Despite the fact the statue faces onto the High Street, there does not appear to have been any attempt to have engaged with the wider population of Oxford. This seems to indicate that the campaign leaders failed to recognise the significance the statue may have in the symbolic landscape of the city of Oxford, beyond the boundaries of the university community. While there was no significant study into the attitudes of local residents to the campaign, letters to the local newspaper tend to indicate that the response was largely negative.

Rhodes Must Fall in Cape Town and Oxford: Campaign Responses

Cape Town

• The response from the UCT authorities was swift. On 9 April 2015, a month after Maxwele’s initial protest and following a meeting of the University of Cape Town Council, the statue was removed from its plinth.
  • The reasons given by the university for applying for temporary removal included a sensitivity toward the feelings of students together with a desire to protect the statue.
• In November 2015 UCT published a wide-ranging heritage statement commissioned in order to support their application for permanent removal of the statue. Within this statement reference to the statue itself was generally derogatory. Walgate was described as a ‘relatively minor sculptor’ and it was noted that the subject had been ‘executed elsewhere with more success’, among other criticisms.
• There was however provision to remove the plinth, which is still in situ, and erect a plaque, or similar, giving information about the removal of the statue. Four sites were noted as having contacted UCT in order to be considered as a destination for any relocation.
• 2025 Update: The Cecil John Rhodes statue that was removed from UCT in April 2015 is still being kept in safe storage at an undisclosed/private location under UCT’s custody. Heritage Western Cape approved its permanent removal in 2016 on the condition that UCT continue to store it safely and seek approval for any future relocation — there has been no public announcement of a move since.

Oxford

• By contrast the initial response to the Oxford campaign was slower. In December 2015 the college released a statement to say that, following the receipt of a petition, they would be applying for permission to remove another contentious piece, a plaque to Rhodes on a nearby building which sat in a conservation area, and would open a consultation on the future of the statue.
  • The legal status of the statue, and indeed the plaque, played a part in how the process for potential removal would be managed — the Rhodes Building and all the statues on it were first listed at Grade II in 1972. In 2011 this listing was upgraded to Grade II, conferring further protection to the building and statues.
• A month after announcing a consultation exercise, the Oriel College authorities released a new statement. In it they explained that following input from a range of organisations and individuals the decision had been made to leave the statue in place. In addition it had also been decided to reverse the decision to remove the nearby plaque.
• The justification given was that the vast body of opinion supported retention of both pieces. The College added that at some point in the future it would endeavour to ‘provide a clear historical context to explain why [the statue] is there’
  • However The Telegraph newspaper revealed that leaked documents suggested that the decision had largely been influenced by threats by prospective donors to withdraw funding offers. The paper claimed that donations and bequests totalling over £100 million were in jeopardy if the statue was removed.

Conclusion

Crouch begins her conclusion:

Much of the opposition to the removal of the Rhodes statues from UCT and Oriel College have centred on a small number of concerns. An often voiced fear, in the UK particularly, is that removal can be seen as an attempt to ‘whitewash’ history, with the historian Mary Beard suggesting that by removing works such as this, and she was talking specifically about the Oxford statue, we run the risk of forgetting what may be unpalatable details of our history.

And continues:

Having examined the current situation in South Africa regarding monuments and statuary it is understandable that the campaign calling for removal was less controversial… it took place in an environment whereby the debates around statues as sites of symbolic meaning were already underway.

On Oxford, Crouch comments:

The college authorities were quick to allude to the possible challenges that the building’s listed status would present to any proposal to remove the work. I would suggest that the college was already at this stage manoeuvring in order to present the impression, however true, that the final decision was out of the college’s hands.

In contrast, in Cape Town:

The UCT statue was also protected by heritage legislation, [but] the university’s response to this was quite different. The report prepared for the university was at pains to point out how little significance the statue had, both historically and artistically.

This sets up the closing discussion:

Both colleges then can be seen to be manipulating the existing legislation covering the works in order to achieve their preferred goal. But what were these goals and why did they differ in each context?

In a line:

I would suggest that the differing responses reveal the dominant values of the respective universities, the countries in which they sit, and the impression that they want to project both within their institutions and to the wider world.

Summarising UCT:

At UCT it was clear, not least by the speed by which the statue was initially removed, that the university authorities were on the whole sympathetic to the call to remove the statue. In doing this UCT positioned themselves as very much in line with the values of the ‘new’ South Africa. The university did not only remove the statue, showing sensitivity to the feelings of black students, they are also engaged in discussions regarding the statue’s final destination. Here the university is demonstrating that it is mindful of the heritage of all groups, seeking to find a site for the work that both acknowledges its history while contextualising it for a new modern audience. It could be argued that in the same way as the South African government’s approach toward the country’s heritage is in part shaped with an eye toward external investment into the country, so too does UCT rely upon external funding for its continued success.

Summarising Oxford:

Without Rhodes’s money there would have been no building, and consequently no statue. For contemporary funders then, the retention of the statue sends the message that any legacy will be long-lasting, untouched by the vagaries of public opinion or changing cultural values. Given some recent debates about the controversial backgrounds of some contemporary potential donors, such as Leonid Blavatnik, the decision not to be swayed about concerns about the views of Cecil Rhodes may be particularly reassuring for them.

2025 Update: With some cursory research I see that Leonid Blavatnik, the “second-richest man in Britain” is still subject to controversy.

Crouch continues:

It is also necessary to look at other aspects of the college’s decision. Importantly Oriel College also assured protestors that it would seek to find a way to contextualize the statue. How this will be done has not yet been decided, but the temporary notice already erected by the college at the front of The Rhodes Building gives a sense of what any contextualizing addition may say. The temporary notice gives a brief history of the statue and goes on to say:

“Many of Cecil Rhodes’s actions and public statements are incompatible with the values of the College and University today. In acknowledging the historical fact of Rhodes’s bequest, the College does not in any way condone or glorify his views or actions.”

Here then the college strikes a balance between ‘historical fact’ and contemporary values. This seems in many ways a perfect solution for Oriel College for while it may wish to demonstrate that the values of the college reflect the contemporary, inclusive values of the modern world it also gains prestige by projecting images of stability and continuity.

Crouch links this back in particular to the discussion on collective memory: 

The retention of the statue maintains the integrity of The Rhodes Building, preserving its façade and its relationship to its audience on Oxford High Street as a city landmark.

Simultaneously, any additional text repositions the work in terms of the values it reproduces. In the context of changing inscriptions, we have already discussed how any changes may be negligible in their affect upon existing audiences, as any site is already familiar to them. Even if changes are noticed they may be ignored as previous meaning is already established. This would seem to minimise the extent to which such changes to a site can alter the role it plays as a framework in the formation of collective memory.

However a contextualisation may function to provide a framework for the collective memories formed by those previously unfamiliar with the site, for example new students.

The closing paragraphs wrap things up perfectly:

The answer to the question “must Rhodes fall?” then seems to have little to do with the statues of Rhodes themselves and everything to do with the political, cultural and institutional context around them. A pair of unremarkable statues have found themselves at the centre of two campaigns that gained international coverage not purely because of who they figuratively depicted but because of what they were perceived to represent.

The differing responses to the campaigns lay in wider attitudes surrounding the attitude to heritage and memorialisation, and how these attitudes intersected with political and financial interests.

While the decisions reached by UCT and Oriel College can be understood against this background, the choice to either remove or contextualise public monumental art may create a paradox for art historians. The removal or contextualising of contentious monumental public art seems to be an attempt to remove art if a particular audience, or audiences, is uncomfortable with it. Rather than allowing viewers to enter their own dialogue with a work, the conversation is shaped externally by the intervention of a ‘contextualisation’ or ended by removal.

All this happens at a time when the most exciting contemporary art is precisely deemed to be that which challenges, shocks or offends. The modern art audience may be ready for the shock of the new, but not the shock of the old. Maybe the most ‘contemporary’ way to treat the monuments of the past is to allow them to stand and to offend, and from that offence build new meanings, values and memories.

I concur. As the saying goes, isn't offence the best form of defence?

If you'd like future essays by email, subscribe to my Substack, you can also find me on X.

1. ^{^}

   I accept I may be biased based on familial identity between myself and the author.

2. ^{^}

   The author's mother (my grandmother) moved to South Africa when her daughter was very young, and so my mother was raised by other family members.

   It’s a deeply personal piece of writing given the maternal connection. This line made me cry: “In the same way that notable personal events are remembered and shaped within families, so public monuments serve to ‘remember’ and shape public memories.”

   The author alludes to an idea that "when they were made they meant one thing" and "this meaning changes over time".

3. ^{^}

   Recall that Pegram is the suspected sculptor of the Oxford statue.

4. ^{^}

   It sounds extra beautiful because of the French.