Renegade Artist Erects Donald Trump Tombstone in Central Park

The stone reads "Make America Hate Again."

Brian Andrew Whiteley, Legacy Stone (2016).

A renegade artist took to Central Park this weekend to express discontentment with presidential candidate Donald Trump in the form of a fake tombstone dedicated to the oft-lampooned businessman with the epitaph “Make America Hate Again.” The mysterious stone also features Trump’s birth year, 1946, but includes no year of death.

Despite the billionaire’s popularity at the polls, Trump has been repeatedly eviscerated by artists, perhaps most memorably by Hanksy, who transposed the Republican front runner’s face onto the poop emoji.

“I just wanted to boil it down to the basics, make it as simple as I could. And Trump is a piece of shit,” Hanksy told the Independent. The newspaper predicts the “Dump Trump” image could very well be “the definitive artistic take on the 2016 race,” ala Shepard Fairey‘s Obama “Hope” and “Change” posters.

Street artist Hanksy's New York mural depicting Donald Trump. Photo via Instagram.

Street artist Hanksy’s New York mural depicting Donald Trump.
Photo via Instagram.

The equally-critical graveyard project first surfaced on social media on Saturday, but by Sunday night had been removed by the city Parks Department—much to the chagrin of anti-Trump New Yorkers.

A spokesperson for the parks department told NBC that there is currently no information as to who erected the tombstone, but that it was city employees who hauled it away. No word on where, exactly, the artifact was hauled to.

Renegade art installations have become a common occurrence, especially in New York green spaces. Last year, a bust of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared in Fort Greene Park. The 100-pound sculpture was promptly removed, but later resurfaced at the Brooklyn Museum as part of its “Agitprop!” exhibition.

Perhaps Dump Trump, Trump’s tombstone, and all of the other anti-Trump art projects the 2016 election has already given way to will someday have a museum show of their own. Until then, we’re just happy there are artists around to articulate what we’re all thinking.