This topic comes up often these days. It's a frustrating one, because it conflates so many seemingly similar issues. Which of the following are we talking about?
- Honoring a person or their memory
- Honoring a person's work
- Enjoying a person's work
- Learning from a person's work because of its quality or its contributions to a medium's historical evolution
- Financially supporting a person (including buying a record / book / painting when the artist is still living
These all present different questions, which is why I think it's a mistake to lump every historical asshole together.
As an arbitrary set of examples, consider:
- Martin Heidegger (one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, who joined the nazi party and for and for a portion of his career wrote works that defended nazism. Long dead).
- Pablo Picasso (one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, who has been revealed as a misogynist and total dick. Long dead).
- Woody Allen (an important, arguably flawed 20th century film maker who ... you know the sordid details. Not yet dead).
For all of them, I would argue strongly against writing them out of history, because we'd just be cheating ourselves out of the valuable contributions they've made.
I would argue against lionizing them or holding them as role models—no statues, children's books, action figures—because they're all assholes and we'd like them and their memories to be punished.
I'd argue strongly for continuing to teach their work in schools, because this is the perfect forum for putting both the valuable and the reprehensible in context. It's also an opportunity to revisit where, if at all, they belong in their respective canons. Heidegger presents a special problem, because we're interested specifically in his ideas—and some of them were awful. So this inevitably leads to a much larger conversation.
When it comes to spending money on their work, I think of them differently. Woody Allen? I'm not giving him any money. If I have an old DVD around I'll watch it. Maybe I'll pirate his movies. But Picasso and Heidegger? Sure I'll go to exhibitions and buy books. Who would I be trying to punish by opting out?