Statue of Christopher Columbus, Bronze statue in Bell Park, Houston, United States
The Statue of Christopher Columbus was a bronze sculpture by Joe Incrapera, installed in 1992 in Bell Park in Houston, Texas. The figure of the explorer stood upright on a base in the park until its removal in 2020.
Italian-American organizations commissioned and installed the statue in 1992 to mark 500 years since Columbus reached the Americas. It stood throughout the following decades as a monument reflecting a particular historical interpretation.
The statue's 2017 paint attack came the same day Houston's Martin Luther King Jr. statue was painted white, as protesters pressed the city to remove Confederate monuments. In June 2020 it was painted red and given a cardboard sign reading "Rip the head from your oppressor" before its left hand was cut off.
The bronze stood in Bell Park, at the coordinates 29.72965, -95.39150 in Houston, until its removal on June 19, 2020; the park itself remains open. Nothing of the 1992 sculpture is left in place, so visitors looking for it will find only the park grounds.
The statue became a symbol of larger conflict when vandals painted its face red and severed its left hand, reflecting the deep debate over its meaning. These damages became a turning point in the decision to remove the monument.
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