The letter’s signers, who include the well-known artist and art historian Deborah Willis and the art critic and theoretician Hal Foster, argue that the monuments and markers honor figures who represent a variety of racist views and practices.

Columbus has been criticized for his treatment of the indigenous people he encountered in the Caribbean and for his role in the European invasion of the Americas; President Roosevelt’s opinions about racial hierarchy and eugenics are now routinely rebuked; and Dr. J. Marion Sims is frequently condemned for his medical experiments on enslaved women. Pétain and Laval were leading members of the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Despite arguing that the five monuments pieces be removed, the letter does not insist that they be destroyed. Instead, it proposes that they be placed in contexts that make their political meanings clear and where education about related issues can occur.

“We see the outcome of the Commission not as destroying heritage, let alone the purported erasure of history, but as the beginning of an exciting new set of possibilities for public art and museums in New York City, one finally devoted to an inclusive and reparative vision of the difficult histories of settler colonialism and the indigenous peoples of this land,” the letter reads.