Sam Durant’s Scaffold (2012) is to be dismantled and burned after an agreement was reached at a conference held between the artist, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the city’s Park and Recreation Board and Dakota elders regarding the rising protests from the Dakota community against the artwork, The Art Newspaper reports. The sculpture caused controversy when it was installed in the Center’s garden as one of the 16 planned additions. The work, which references the largest mass execution conducted in the US, in which 38 Dakota Indians were killed in 1862 in nearby Mankato, Minnesota, has been described by protestors as a sculpture that ‘trivializes a traumatizing chapter in the community’s history’.
The dismantling of the sculpture will begin on 2 June by a native construction company and it is expected to take at least 4 days to remove the wood. It will then be taken to the Fort Snelling area, which has historical significance to the Dakota Oyate, where they will ceremonially burn the wood. In a joint statement released by the Walker, the artist ‘Sam Durant has committed to never create the Dakota gallows again. He commits to transferring the intellectual property rights of this work to the Dakota Oyate (people).’ This latest in controversial artworks by white artists transmuting the suffering of ethnic minorities, and which are displayed at public institutions (recalling Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till at the Whitney, New York), calls into question the ethics of artmaking and the authority and ownership of the artist on the subjects they portray.
Sam Durant has reportedly apologised for the trauma his sculpture has caused the Dakota community, calling the resolution ‘hopefully a path for healing.’
1 June 2017
