The Thompson Elk is one of the more iconic avatars for our fair city. Commissioned by former mayor David S. Thompson and designed by sculptor Roland Hinton Perry, the majestic statue sits somewhat awkwardly in the middle of Southeast Main Street and has been the source of pride and controversy for over a century.
When it was unveiled in 1900, the local Elks Club did not participate in the dedication, apparently deeming it “a monstrosity of art” and people have constantly griped about its placement directly in the path of downtown traffic.
In 2020, the fountain became a flashpoint. During the nightly protests spurred on by the murder of George Floyd by police, protestors used it as a meeting place, frequently mounting the bronze steed and starting fires in the troughs around the base of the statue. It eventually led to the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s decision to remove the Elk for safekeeping.
The more recent history of the statue is at the heart of Erika Bolstad’s short film The Elk. The 30-minute documentary is an amazing piece of reportage, folding in footage taken by journalists and ACLU observers during the protests and commentary from folks like architecture critic Brian Libby and urban tour guide Sarah Gilbert to tell the story of a city trying to preserve its history amid significant social and cultural upheaval.
Bolstad says that The Elk was born from a much larger film project she had started in 2022 built from an article she wrote for Stateline about cities in the Western US that had monuments either torn down or damaged by protesters during this period of racial reckoning. But when it came to the Thompson Fountain, she “realized The Elk has its own storyline that’s super-connected to the 2020 protests here in Portland. Initially, I thought we could just spin off a short film about the return of the Elk as a sample to show people what I’m capable of for the feature. It just became a bigger film and exceeded my expectations.”
The Elk packs an impressive amount of information into its humble running time, laying out the background history of the monument itself and providing a substantive overview of what it was like to be on the frontlines of the protests. And it does a fantastic job honoring this piece of art through heroic shots of the statue being trucked through the city to a warehouse in Tualatin where work was done to repair the damage it incurred by being pelted with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters.
Bolstad’s ability to get shots of the statue on the move and as it languished in a warehouse (a secret location that the filmmaker dubbed “Art Jail”) prior to its reinstallation earlier this year was no small feat. “I had to work to gain access,” she says. “People were worried about how they come off when they talk about monuments. They are worried about the public perception. It has taken a while to get people to warm up to this project.”
The finished film has been universally embraced thus far. The Elk has been screened at various festivals around the country, including the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation and Technology where it netted a prize for Best Documentary Short.
On Sunday, October 25 a screening at Portland Art Museum looks to be even more special. While it will feature the traditional Q&A with Bolstad and folks involved with the film, the event wraps up with a walking tour, led by Gilbert, of some of downtown Portland’s monuments and public art, including the Thompson Elk.
“I would really love for people to have the opportunity to have conversations with some of the participants [in the film],” says Bolstad, “that avoid the kind of the thing where you have to raise your hand and have a mic brought to you. It can be more informal.”
Even with the Thompson Elk back in its rightful place, with its water basins repaired—looking shinier than ever—public opinion is still apparently split about the statue’s place amid the 2020 protests. The Elk includes a clip from a 2022 Portland City Council meeting during which then-mayor Ted Wheeler proclaimed that the return of the statue was “a statement that people who break the law and break things do not get the last word in our city.” As Bolstad remembers, when she showed the film at this year’s Portland Panorama, Wheeler drew hisses from the audience, whereas a small group of viewers in John Day responded to the former mayor’s comments with applause.
“It’s interesting how you get to see in real time how audiences bring their own stories to what they’re seeing on screen,” Bolstad says. “Yet, whenever we screen this film, we do get a lot of people who also say, ‘I didn’t think about this from the point of view of how the protesters saw the elk or how a historic preservationist might feel about that.’ I want to build empathy with the work I make and create the space for those kinds of reactions.”
The Elk screens in Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park, Sun Oct 25, 4 pm, FREE w/ RSVP, all ages. PAM screening includes a post-screening walking tour to view the Thompson Elk and other nearby monuments. The Elk will also screen at the 2026 Austin Film Festival.