In the early hours of Monday morning, three artists and a group of helpers illegally installed a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. The faux-bronze sculpture was designed to harmonize with the nearby Prison Ship Martyrs Monument to soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and it was mounted on a previously empty plinth, with Snowden’s last name placed beneath the bronze eagle at the base of the column.
“If this thing gets taken down right away we’ll certainly be disappointed, but we think it’ll be worth it thanks to the internet,” one of the artists told Animal, which filmed the pre-dawn installation. “The fact that a risk was taken, the fact that an image comes out of that event that can be passed around can never be undone. So you can rip the statue out, but you can’t erase the fact that it happened and that people are sharing it.”
This was not the first Snowden monument to appear in New York City. A life-size sculpture of the former CIA worker and NSA contractor by artist Jim Dessicino was installed in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District as part of last year’s Art in Odd Places public art festival.
By Monday afternoon, the New York City Parks Department had covered the Fort Greene Park Snowden monument and removed it, though not before images of the installation were photographed, tweeted, and widely circulated online.
