Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with notes from the public related to his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with notes from the public related to his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection, is missing something. The scaled-down version of Andrew Jackson has been isolated in a Plexiglas box, away from the rest of the installation.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
A special 85th birthday cake was served at the July 15 opening reception of artist Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
A special 85th birthday cake was served at the July 15 opening reception of artist Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen celebrating his 85th birthday and the July 15 opening reception for his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
A 1934 story in the New Orleans States newspaper reported the decapitation of the statue of Andrew Jackson by Clark Mills
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with notes from the public related to his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with notes from the public related to his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Artist Robert Tannen, with his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
A special 85th birthday cake was served at the July 15 opening reception of artist Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Back in 1982, New Orleans artist Robert Tannen created a model of Jackson Square, with knee-high replicas of St. Louis Cathedral, the Presbytere and Cabildo, the Pontalba apartments, a stretch of the Mississippi River levee, and, of course, the equestrian statue of namesake Andrew Jackson. For years and years, the smooth, simplified, scaled-down buildings were part of the art collection of the Pan American Life (insurance) Center on Poydras Street.
The miniature, minimalist Jackson Square rested on a carpet on the 11th floor of the office building, near a smoking lounge and a display of potted plants. Now, the handsome, somewhat ghostly 10-by-12-foot model is on display on the third floor of the Historic New Orleans Collection museum, at 520 Royal St., just three blocks from the real Jackson Square. But, compared to the real Jackson Square, the model’s missing something.
Old Hickory, the seventh president of the United States, whose heroic figure seated atop a rearing horse is a universal symbol of the City That Care Forgot, is exiled a few paces away from the rest of the model, in a Plexiglas case atop a pedestal. Tiny Jackson has a view of the rest of the model, but he’s not part of it. Why?
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection, is missing something. The scaled-down version of Andrew Jackson has been isolated in a Plexiglas box, away from the rest of the installation.
The man on the horse
Andrew Jackson is a problem. Sure, the charismatic general saved America from invasion in 1814 by gathering a heroic, hodgepodge army that — as Johnny Horton taught us — fought the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. Repulsing the pesky redcoats a few miles downriver helped put Jackson in the White House in 1829. In 1856, it also put him on the back of that bronze horse in the midst of New Orleans’ old town square.
WHEN: Open Tuesday–Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m; Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Through August 28.
WHERE: The Historic New Orleans Collection’s 520 Royal St. location.
MORE INFO: hnoc.org
Jackson was among the saints of American history to many. But to others, he was an unforgivable devil. Jackson was a slave owner and the architect of the brutal government program that evicted Native Americans from their ancestral lands. These days we’d describe the forced exodus of indigenous people — the Trail of Tears — as an exercise in ethnic cleansing or even geographic genocide.
Guests to the exhibit at the HNOC are invited to write their views on colorful Post-It notes arrayed on the back wall. More than one mentioned Jackson’s villainy.
“Tear down monuments to racists,” reads one sticky note, echoing the sentiment that led to the removal of Confederate monuments across New Orleans and the nation in recent years. “Decapitate the Jackson statue again,” reads another, referring to a legendary beheading of the statue in 1934, when some kids unscrewed Old Hickory’s noggin and let it fall to the sidewalk below.
Robert Tannen celebrating his 85th birthday and the July 15 opening reception for his 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Robert Tannen just turned 85. He hails from Coney Island, New York, originally, but has lived in New Orleans for 50 years. He’s an urban planner, who first came down to the Gulf Coast to help with post-Hurricane Camille recovery work.
He’s also an artist. Over the past half-century Tannen has established himself as the Vito Corleone of New Orleans conceptualism, the godfather of audacious sculptures made of anything from a taxidermy swordfish to a full-sized lifeboat to inner tubes to cinder blocks to broken washing machines.
Tannen had his Lilliputian Jackson Square fabricated by a local sheet-metal shop. The elegant sculpture was his tribute to the historic site, which he considers a world-class public space. When he was new to New Orleans, he said, he liked to go there, eat a muffuletta and soak up the splendor of the architecture and history. Every neighborhood should have a home base like Jackson Square, he said.
Tannen said he was aware of Andrew Jackson’s knotty role in American history. The Trail of Tears, he said was “horrendous.” But he included the miniature monument to Jackson – with pigeons cheekily perched on his head and the head of his steed – in his sculpture of the square for the simple reason that the 126-year-old statue was a central part of the actual site.
Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, on display at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Tannen said the little aluminum sculpture of Jackson was always removable, which, he said, reflects the changing nature of the square itself. That location, he said, had a long history even before the Jackson monument was plopped on its plinth. The location had been the site of Native American trading, a parade ground for colonial armies, and the site of public executions, before it ever became Jackson Square.
“Because the square has changed over the past 300 years,” Tannen said, “it will probably change in the future.”
If the monument were eventually removed, “the square would do just fine without Jackson,” he said.
Political implications aside, Tannen said that when the sculpture went on display at the Pan American Life Center, he hoped that the Jackson statue wouldn’t be displayed with the rest, for fear that it might be stolen. It’s small enough and light enough that it could easily have been spirited away.
Tannen said that, as he remembers, the small artwork was displayed in the center of the square at first, but later removed. A photograph of the installation from the mid-1980s indicates that Jackson was absent by that time.
But he wasn’t lost. When the building changed hands a few years back, Tannen’s sculpture went up for auction. Thanks to a donor, it found a new home at The Historic New Orleans Collection. Obviously, Jackson was still part of the tout ensemble.
Historic New Orleans Collection Chief Curator Jason Wiese said there was “no political statement” intended when the museum decided to sequester the mini Jackson monument away from the rest of the shrunken square. Wiese said he feared theft, just like Tannen feared theft four decades ago.
“There was no way to secure it to the floor,” he said of the small sculpture. The museum put Jackson in a box, “just to keep that element from walking.”
Though, who knows, it might have been possible to screw little Jackson’s protective Plexiglass box to the floor as easily as it was to secure it to a pedestal.
In any case, Wiese said, nobody’s complained about the separation so far.
A special 85th birthday cake was served at the July 15 opening reception of artist Robert Tannen's 1982 sculpture of Jackson Square, at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
In honor of the July 15 opening reception to the exhibit, and Tannen’s 85th birthday, the Bywater Bakery produced a very authentic chocolate and vanilla cake replica of the artwork. As the crowd nibbled away at the cake Cathedral and colonial government buildings, something Tannen said about the square, and the whole city for that matter, came to mind. “It’s hard to imagine that anyplace will survive forever,” he said.
Note: Thank you, thank you to the New Orleans Public Library reference desk, for digging up the 1934 newspaper story about the Andrew Jackson statue's decapitation.
WHEN: Open Tuesday–Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m; Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Through August 28.
WHERE: The Historic New Orleans Collection’s 520 Royal St. location.
MORE INFO: hnoc.org
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