A prominent statue of former president Theodore Roosevelt will be removed from the American Museum of Natural History in New York over white supremacy objections.
The museum will take down the bronze statue, which has stood in its Central Park West entrance since 1940.
The monument depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American and an African man standing behind the horse.
It has long faced objections over symbolising colonial expansion and racial discrimination.
It comes as the anti-racism momentum, sparked by the death of George Floyd, has prompted authorities across the world to reassess monuments and statues depicting historical figures associated with white supremacy or slavery.
On June 4, the statue was fenced off and the museum lined with riot police as Back Lives Matter demonstrators gathered amid the ongoing global protests.
However, Donald Trump was quick to slam the decision, tweeting on Monday: "Ridiculous. Don't do it!"
The US president has blasted the US-wide protests, saying demonstrators have behaved badly and calling on police to use more force to quash tensions.
At a rally last week, Mr said: "The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments - our beautiful monuments - tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. We're not conforming"
His comments came in reaction to New York mayor Bill de Blasio's written statement on Sunday, which said: “The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.
“The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”
The museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times the museum’s “community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd”.
“We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism,” Ms Futter said.
Officials said it had not been determined when the Roosevelt statue would be removed and where it would go.
“The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy,” Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the president, said in a statement to the Times.
“It is time to move the statue and move forward.”
Ms Futter said the museum objected to the statue but not to Roosevelt, a pioneering conservationist whose father was a founding member of the museum and who served as New York’s governor before becoming the 26th president.
She said the museum would name its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt “in recognition of his conservation legacy”.
In 2017, protesters splashed red liquid on the statue’s base to represent blood and published a statement calling for its removal as an emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism”.
