With Her Monumental Fountain in London, Kara Walker Offers a Gift We Shouldn’t Accept

When he was the mayor of London, in 2008, Boris Johnson endorsed a proposal to erect a £4-million bronze statue memorializing the survivors of British slavery. The figures in the proposed monument were to be Black, making it unlike other statues of its kind, which typically pay homage to white abolitionists like William Wilberforce. Johnson agreed that Hyde Park, just a short walk from Buckingham Palace, was “a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the millions who lost their live