RICHMOND, Va. — A massive bronze sculpture of a young black man with dreadlocks astride a muscular horse was permanently installed Tuesday in Virginia’s capital city, not far from one of the country’s most prominent displays of Confederate monuments.
Thousands of people crowded the lawn of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as “Rumors of War” was unveiled. The piece, the first public sculpture by prominent artist Kehinde Wiley and Wiley’s largest work to date, was previously on display in Times Square.
“Rumors of War” was Wiley’s response to the Confederate monuments that pepper the U.S. and the South in particular. The new monument arrived amid an ongoing debate across the country about what do with Confederate imagery and as Richmond grapples with how to tell its history as both the capital of the Confederacy and a former hub of the international slave trade.
