{"id":1012152,"date":"2026-08-20T04:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1012152\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T04:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:34:17","slug":"controversial-christopher-columbus-statue-to-make-return-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1012152\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Christopher Columbus Statue to Make Return This Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Little Italy is getting a new museum<\/a>, and it comes with a piece of Chicago history<\/a> that has spent the last six years at the center of a very\u00a0public argument.<\/p>\n

The Florence Scala Italian American Museum<\/a> is nearing its planned opening at 1501 W. Taylor St., where it will\u00a0highlight\u00a0Italian immigrants and their contributions to Chicago. The museum is targeting October 12\u2014Columbus Day\u2014for its debut, according to Block Club Chicago<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the museum will be home to the Christopher Columbus statue that once stood in Arrigo Park.<\/p>\n

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The Columbus statue was one of three removed from public parks in 2020 amid\u00a0renewed protests\u00a0against Columbus’ history of\u00a0violence and enslavement. Its eventual fate became part of a years-long legal and political fight between the city and Chicago’s Italian American community. Under a 2025 agreement, the Chicago Park District gave the statue to the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans on loan, allowing it to be displayed\u00a0indoors\u00a0rather than returned to a public space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something very special to us,\u201d\u00a0Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, told Block Club Chicago. \u201cWe\u2019re only expecting the same respect and sensitivity to something that\u2019s important to us as anyone else would with their culture. [The Columbus statue] really has nothing to do with what this guy who lived 600 years ago really did, what he conquered or what he found. What it\u2019s become is an icon of faith and hope for our ethnic group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statue (created by\u00a0sculptor Carlo Brioschi) is expected to occupy a central spot inside the museum, mounted on a concrete platform built into the floor. Onesti told Block Club that it will serve as the museum’s centerpiece and a symbol of the contributions of Italian Americans to Chicago. In order to get it into the building, however, he says he will have to cut a hole in the roof and lower\u00a0it in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The museum will present a chronological history of Italians in Chicago when it opens. As for the empty pedestal in Arrigo Park, it will soon have a new tenant: A statue of Frances Xavier Cabrini will\u00a0replace the removed Columbus statue. Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen canonized by the\u00a0Roman Catholic Church and the patron saint of immigrants, received about 38 percent of roughly 3,900 votes in a public contest to select the honoree earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Little Italy is getting a new museum, and it comes with a piece of Chicago history that has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1012153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[1037,29645,960,5386,1818,29646],"class_list":["post-1012152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-art","tag-categories-art","tag-chicago","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-news-art"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117125976498381557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1012153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}