Melted Robert E. Lee Statue Will Take a New Form

Charlottesville's toppled Robert E. Lee statue isn't coming back—but its bronze is about to get a second act. Years after white supremacists rallied around the monument and the city took it down, a local nonprofit has nearly finished a competition to turn the melted metal into new public art meant to unify, not divide, per the Washington Post. Swords into Plowshares, which secretly melted the statue in 2023, has narrowed almost three dozen proposals to three finalists, all drawing on the remaining bronze ingots owned by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, WVIR reports.

Boston-based MASS Design Group's "Rooted" centers on a structure resembling both trees and humans, with scattered "seed" sculptures across the city. Oakland's Hood Design Studio offers "Ringing and Shouting," stainless-steel spirals inlaid with bronze that gradually migrate to encircle historic "witness trees" in the city. Washington, DC's PUSH Studio proposes "Land Forge," with open earth-and-bronze cones in six parks, reaching as high as the original Lee statue. The public can weigh in online or at Charlottesville's Jefferson School, with a winner to be announced June 10, the fifth anniversary of the statue's removal.