Teddy Roosevelt statue removed in NYC

Teddy Roosevelt statue removed from Museum of Natural History

Workers have removed a statue of Teddy Roosevelt from in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

NEW YORK - A statue of Teddy Roosevelt has been removed from the front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Workers took the bronze monument off of its pedestal on Wednesday night. It had been prominently displayed outside the museum entrance since 1940.

The statue depicts the former president on horseback, flanked by representations of a Native American man and an African man on foot.

Critics have called it a symbol of racism and colonialism. The city's Public Design Commission voted in June to relocate the NYC Roosevelt statue.

"The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt's legacy," Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, said in a statement to the NY Times in June. "It is time to move the statue and move forward."

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Museum president Ellen Futter said the museum objects to the statue but not to Roosevelt, a pioneering conservationist whose father was a founding member of the institution and who served as New York's governor before becoming the 26th president.

The statue has been vandalized several times over the past few years.

In 2017, protesters splashed red liquid on the statue's base to represent blood and published a statement calling for its removal as an emblem of "patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism."

It was targeted again last October. Museum security saw a man and woman use some sort of paint or dye to vandalize the base of the statue before running away.

The statue will be moved to the Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.