A new statue erected outside Rotterdam Centraal has made international headlines this week - but Rotterdammers aren’t all too pleased about it. Why? The American site Yahoo News reports that the statue is the new “must-see attraction” at a train station…in Amsterdam.
At the beginning of June, a four-metre bronze statue of a young woman by British artist Thomas J Price was placed at Stationsplein outside the main train station in the city of Rotterdam. The statue, called Moments Contained, has been incredibly well-received by locals, and this week has even been featured on international news sites.
Many have praised the artwork - and the artist - for simply highlighting an “ordinary-looking black woman”, as The Guardian puts it. Talking to the UK news outlet, 13-year-old Maada said it was “nice to see something other than a white man in a suit.”
Even news outlets outside of Europe have picked up on the story - although some have apparently struggled to get to grips with the geography of the Netherlands. Case in point: Yahoo News ran the headline “Statue of black woman becomes must-see attraction at Amsterdam train station”.
In the article - which initially appeared on 21Ninety - the reporter explains that Moments Contained can be found “at the Rotterdam Centraal Station - which is the largest train station in Amsterdam.”
Source: Yahoo News.
Unsurprisingly, the residents of Rotterdam weren’t all too impressed with the article. Amsterdam-based news site AT5 took a trip down to the second-biggest Dutch city to talk to some of the locals about the confusion.
"A matter of ignorance I would say," one member of the public said, while another speculated that the article had been written by an intern. Another was able to put a more positive spin on the mistake: "They think that Rotterdam is actually the most important city in the Netherlands," she told AT5.
Thumb: My Eyes4u via Shutterstock.com.