The toppled statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston should be displayed in a city museum – horizontally and still daubed with paint – and its former plinth topped with temporary artworks but sometimes left empty, an independent commission has concluded.
After a citywide consultation, the We Are Bristol History Commission recommended the statue be preserved in the damaged state it was in when it was retrieved from the harbour after being pulled down and thrown into the dock. It has been exhibited at the city’s M Shed museum alongside information about the history of the enslavement of people of African descent.
