Civic Virtue has become a Greek tragedy.
Queens residents are protesting the city’s plans to banish a controversial sculpture to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn — which would be the second move for the classic, 90-year-old monument that pols have slammed for decades as a sexist eyesore.
“The Triumph of Civic Virtue” depicts a nude male warrior symbolizing civic virtue trampling two women, the sirens of vice and corruption.
Advocates fear the city could exile the statue to the cemetery as soon as next week.
Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. and statue supporters rallied yesterday to keep Civic Virtue in its current place outside Queens Borough Hall in Kew Gardens.
“I’m the father of two daughters; if I thought this was sexist, I wouldn’t be here,” Vallone said. “Leave our Virtue alone. It’s art.”
The eternally unpopular statue was crafted by renowned sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies and unveiled in City Hall Park in 1922.
But it has triggered a firestorm among women’s rights advocates ever since.
Soon after it was dedicated, Civic Virtue was called “Fat Boy” and “The Rough Guy,” and the city even held a public hearing on its appropriateness.
MacMonnies defiantly upheld his Herculean hero, claiming that the man stood on two rocks, not two women.
“I am blamed for choosing a male figure to suggest strength,” he told the New York Times.
He added, “When we wish to symbolize something tempting, we use the woman’s form.”
The 22-ton statue was finally moved to Queens Borough Hall in 1941, after Mayor Fiorello La Guardia got tired of viewing Civic Virtue’s naked rear from his City Hall window. Former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman tried to expel the statue in the 1980s and ’90s.
Even shamed former congressman Anthony Weiner held a press conference last year threatening to sell Civic Virtue on Craigslist.
That’s when an outraged Richard Moylan, president of Green-Wood Cemetery, offered to take in the unpopular work of art.
Last month, the city’s Design Commission quietly approved a plan to finally exile Civic Virtue to the privately-owned Green-Wood.
Locals charge the decision was made behind their back.
“The idea to take public art — whether you like the art or not — and place it in a private environment is absolutely outrageous, and does not represent civic virtue,” said Queens Community Board Chairwoman Andrea Crawford.