A Russian art collector offers to buy America’s controversial statues

Russian art collector Andrei Filatov has offered to buy two statues targeted by the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

Filatov, a Russian businessman, art collector, and owner of the London-based Art Russe foundation, has expressed his desire to buy the monuments of former US president Theodore Roosevelt in New York and Alexander Baranov, a tsarist official, in Alaska.

Roosevelt’s statue, which depicts him on a horse, flanked by a Native American and an African American man, stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. For years, it has been the target of protestors, who demand its removal because of the monument’s portrayal of the country’s Native American and African American population as inferior. Additionally, the former US president has been criticised for his openly racist and colonial views, and his promotion of eugenic theories. As a result, the city’s mayor Bill de Blasio recently agreed to remove the statue.

Similarly, activists in Alaska demanded the relocation of the monument to Baranov, who ruled the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when it was a Russian colony, for his role in perpetrating genocide against Indigenous communities in Alaska.

However, Filatov considers that the statues are worth conserving, as he says both figures played an important part in Russian history. “First and foremost, this is about the preservation of the memory of statesmen who influenced the history of Russia, the development of its economy and statehood,” said Filatov in an official statement released by Art Russe.

Filatov’s fortune is estimated by Forbes at £600m. His Art Russe foundation treasures a private collection of more than 200 works of Soviet art from 1917-1991, and has sponsored a series of galleries and exhibitions in London and Abu Dhabi.