The White House has installed on its grounds a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in the latest bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to reshape depictions of U.S. history and culture.
The campaign against an ideology Mr. Trump calls “anti-American” has encompassed the dismantling of slavery exhibits, restoration of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could reverse decades of social progress.
“The statue is now residing on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus,” Mr. Trump told the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations in a letter on Sunday.
He thanked the group for its gift of the statue to the government.
During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd, several U.S. cities took down statues of the Italian navigator, whose Spanish-funded voyages from the 1490s onward paved the way for Europe’s conquests of the Americas.
