People are effing stupid or criminally inarticulate.
Instead of saying obvious things, they toss a million extraneous or at least side-issues in the hamper,
and all the whites and light colors get stained with red and other fabrics that bleed.
Take this statue:

It's not offensive because of George Floyd or some battle 120 years ago or because Roosevelt was insensitive to Native Americans.
It's offensive because it shows 2 ethnic groups - presumably the members are a synecdoche representing the whole race - largely groveling (or "standing tall groveling") at Teddy's feet. Servant style. Totally cringeworthy. So why are we having this absurdly over-intellectual debate about the statue and museums - any kid of Native or Black extraction will probably feel some shame seeing this obvious pandering inequality (should we add some marker indications of "noble savage" to make it starker?). Any slightly educated & woke person of some White ancestry will still likely feel that cringe when seeing something that belonged on Lawrence Welk or Reader's Digest "I am Joe's Appendix" or much earlier, that's long past its shelf-life, like Mickey Rooney's awful depiction of an "Asian" in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I mean, we don't keep asbestos around for nostalgia, and while this statue isn't quite to that level of toxic, it's pretty awful. Put it in a side room somewhere and replace it with something presentable, not cringeworthy. Yeah, we know the White dudes wiped out lots of natives & Mexicans and imprisoned/enslaved Black folk for a few centuries. It's pretty hard to erase any mention of that, to cancel completely. But we don't have to be completely stupid about it to get rid of the least justifiable. A statue like this outside a museum can easily be moved, no? I mean Teddy didn't seem that tonedeaf for his day and age - why leave him mocked up with a tonedeaf depiction in 2020?
The rest of the statue debate is frequently different for some obvious reasons, not that I expect to sway anyone with any common sense or notes on historicity. Confederate soldiers like *most* soldiers have statues erected because the historical figure is seen as having some heroic, braveheart-like qualities that came through in the heat of battle. Joan of Arc is celebrated not because she got burned at the stake, only marginally because of her faith, but primarily because she was brave in being burned at the stake and for regrouping the French to fight off the British. Do we remember what they were fighting about? probably names for some pudding, or whether to spell it "Couleur" or "Colour" (both wrong, by the way - idiot Europeans) - or religion, like "tastes great/less filling" (or Henry VIII's "really, won't the Pope let me divorce 2 or 3 wives? I'll just have to kill them otherwise" which he did anyway). So all the Lighthorse Lee or Stonewall Jackson is *almost* all about who got shot or cut up at Shenendoah or Gettysburg or Manassas or somewhere, not really about what kind of people they were, whether they had slaves, etc., though certainly which team they played for - not a lot of McClellan nor Lincoln statues in Birmingham. Like, why are we so into sports stars? just because - it's not like Einstein didn't do more for humanity than Babe Ruth, but sports and military and everything else is just how we do shit. If you want to do something useful, don't get Stonewall of Stone Mountain - that's only southerners that go there anyway - get Andrew Jackson off the $20 billl - he was a nasty motherfucker. And was Sherman fighting to abolish slavery? or simply killing people and blowing up arms depots because that's what Generals are supposed to do to the enemy? yeah, most military people throughout history had huge character flaws or were just evil incarnate, just as most male hormone sportsstars have a good chance of being a nasty piece of work, possibly dumb as a rock to go along. But we still like that quarterback or receiver, still want to hear about Joltin' Joe or Barry Bonds, or Usain Bolt (ok, maybe track & field people are much nicer). But do we act as if every tribute to Pete Rose is celebrating his gambling, every Roger Maris or Babe Ruth mention is thinking of their alcoholism, how Doc Ellis pitched a game on LSD (actually that was pretty cool), or Ty Cobb was a racist, misanthropic asshole? Well, military heroes were the "sports stars" of yesterday. Sir Francis Drake's a good example - a war-and-peace criminal to the Spanish, a hero to the Brits. But the basic thing is, he sailed around the world intercepting and shooting up/burning up boats and taking their cargo. A sea raider. If on land he would have mowed down opposing armies or razed little villages. And likely more statues dedicated to him. We take all of this so personally, but it's just we've always had more to admire about jerks than quality people. Actually, growing quality people is a fairly recent thing - they've always been far in the minority.

The headline is hyperbole, virtually no one is calling for abolishing museums, but what many lefties are actually calling for would end up being their demise.

Actually what leftist museum employees are calling for with their new unions and such: they want lots more pay and respect and more young inexperienced people to be hired with they think are the right revisionist history attitudes. And at the same time they want to get rid of all rich people funding of museums and sitting on boards. And they want entrance fees to be lowered or eliminated.

So they basically want: PIE IN THE SKY! MONEY FROM TREES!

Because taxpayers are certainly not going to pay for this. Especially in this world economy. (And if they would, they would have a say in what gets exhibited and taught, and I think it's a safe bet that it wouldn't be radical revisionist lefty history.)

It is true that many museums are suffering financial disaster right now.

Nearly every major museum has announced many layoffs in several stages, the latest being permanent.

One of the main museum ethics organizations that accredits museums has dropped the requirement that endowment funds must be used only for acquisitions and not operating expenses.

Many large museums are spending into their endowments, which are not furnishing investment income anyways.

Many small museums do not have endowments or have small ones and are teetering on closing and are doing things like "Go Fund Me". Many will start selling collections. MANY OF THE SMALL ONES WILL CLOSE PERMANENTLY.

Don't worry about the artifacts, though. THE PRIVATE COLLECTORS WILL SAVE THE ARTIFACTS FOR HISTORY and for the future when institutions to save them are recreated, JUST LIKE THEY ALWAYS HAVE in times of war and other disasters. Because: You can't trust governments, "the people," 100% with their own heritage. Because governments fall and civilizations fall, but the desire to own something of value and to collect significant objects continues.

So this is where the anti-private ownership movement is wrong. If you want to preserve artifacts through the ages, their having private monetary value is the only thing that saves them sometimes. A mix of public or private ownership is best.

I.E. A significant number of those paintings on canvas created by W.P.A. artists on government salary during the Depression? They were used in WWII as insulation for pipes on war ships. And another example: if rich western "colonialist" nations had not "looted" artifacts from war torn and/or disastrously run poor nations in the 19th century, many probably would not exist today, i.e., Benin bronzes, Greek and Roman ancient sculpture....

P.S. I estimate at least 50% of museum jobs will cease to exist for the foreseeable future. Complaining about what their current policy is in this situation is absurd. They are trying to figure out how to survive any which way possible. They are basically in the same position as restaurants: with reopening, attendance will still have to be vastly reduced.