The Elk

Overview

The Elk sculpture is a beloved icon in Portland, Oregon, but it was sidelined during the 2020 protests. Six years later, it returns, this time to a city and a nation divided over who or what belongs on a pedestal. As protest consumed Portland, Ore. in 2020, the city removed a beloved elk sculpture for safekeeping. Six years later, the elk is the first of the city's damaged monuments to return, and the only sculpture without controversy. But in a city that never really stopped protesting, people remain divided over why the elk went away—and what it means for the dinged-up but refurbished symbol to finally return. Set in an American city reckoning with its symbols of westward expansion, the unfolding fate of the elk and the other sculptures tells the story of a nation divided over who and what belongs on a pedestal.

Erika Bolstad