With the national conversation about monuments and who we choose to honor reaching a fever pitch, the “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt” was one of four controversial memorials in New York up for a city commission to reconsider in 2017. The commission was split, and the city decided to leave the statue up and to add context. The resulting exhibition is not permanent, but the museum is looking at ways to incorporate parts of it in other areas of the institution.

The monument, which was designed by James Earle Fraser and installed on city property in 1940, has been defaced at least twice over the last few decades , including in 2017 when protesters splashed red liquid representing blood over the statue’s base. Another protest with red paint in 1971 was a response to the insult Native Americans took from the statue, said David Hurst Thomas, the museum’s curator of anthropology, who works closely with Native Americans.

[Read about a protest defacing the Roosevelt statue.]

“I was always known as the guy with that really obnoxious statue outside of his museum; I’ve never liked it,” Dr. Thomas said in an interview. “We’re supposed to be building some bridges into indigenous communities, and this is a tough way to do it.”

“But that said, I don’t think that we ought to just blow it up,” he added. “I think it’s a statement in time about where the museum was.”