WSAG Opens a Public Record on Damage to the City-Owned Jefferson Sculpture

Update, July 17: The Public Design Commission has withdrawn item 30459 from the July 20 consent agenda and informed WSAG that it “will be presented at the next appropriate public hearing.” The revised agenda marks the item “WITHDRAWN.” A hearing date has not yet been announced.

While reviewing the New York City Public Design Commission’s July 20 agenda, the Washington Street Advocacy Group discovered an unexpected consent item concerning a “minor repair of a quill” on the city-owned Thomas Jefferson by David d’Angers. That listing prompted us to request the treatment proposal and ask when, where, and how the damage occurred.

The records supplied since then report that the last inch of the quill broke off on May 27 while the monumental painted-plaster sculpture was being prepared to move from the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library Reading Room to the new Klingenstein Family Gallery. The New York Historical has now identified June 12 as the repair date—six days before Democracy Matters opened to the public and 38 days before the full Commission meeting at which the original agenda scheduled preliminary and final approval.

On July 14, before receiving the proposal, WSAG sent a preliminary request to testify at a public hearing, expressly pending receipt and review of that document. After the proposal and incident report were available, WSAG formally appealed for a public hearing on July 15 and asked to testify about the separate gallery move, the repeated handling of this fragile sculpture, and the approval sequence for the completed repair. WSAG then organized a letter from historians and scholars supporting a public hearing. On July 17, the Commission granted that request by withdrawing the consent item and committing to present it at a future public hearing.

To help reporters, scholars, conservators, and the public understand the issue, we have opened a continuously updated resource page: Thomas Jefferson Sculpture: Documents and Timeline. It gathers the official agenda, incident report, treatment proposal, 2021 loan presentation, photographs, institutional statement, confirmed chronology, and unanswered questions in one place.

WSAG is still gathering information. The public hearing will allow the Commission, the responsible institutions, scholars, and members of the public to address the incident and unresolved approval questions on the record. We welcome additional records and corrections.