Monumental Women

Monumental Women, also known as the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund, is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization dedicated to placing the first statue honoring women’s history in New York City’s Central Park.[1][2] With support from the New York City Parks Department and the Central Park Conservancy, the statue will honor Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth, who were all pioneers in the battle for women’s right to vote and the larger movement for women’s rights.[3] The site will be on the northwest corner of the Literary Walk portion of The Mall, the widest pedestrian path in Central Park that spans from 66th Street to 72nd Street.[4][5]

Monumental Women
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund
Legal statusNon-profit
PurposeAll-volunteer organization dedicated to placing the first statue honoring women’s history in New York City’s Central Park
HeadquartersNew York, NY
President
Pam Elam
  • Coline Jenkins
  • Dr. Myriam Miedzian
  • Ellen Chesler
  • David Spaulding
  • Brenda Berkman
  • Judaline Cassidy
  • Ariel Deutsch
  • Gary Ferdman
  • Namita Luthra
  • Meridith Maskara
  • Heather Nesle

Mission

To commission and maintain a statue in Central Park dedicated to honoring women's history. To create an educational campaign around women's rights history. To challenge municipalities to honor more women and people of color in public spaces.[6]

History

Since 2013, the Statue Fund/Monumental Women campaign has been dealing with the City to "break the bronze ceiling" in Central Park to create the first statue of real women in the Park's 165-year history.[7][8][9]

Monumental Women raised $1.5 million in mostly private funding to pay for the statue,[10] including contributions from foundations, businesses and over 1,000 individual donations.[11] The statue campaign is dependent on private donations.[12] Several troops of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York have donated money from their cookie sales to the fund[13] and the fund has received a $500,000 grant from New York Life.[14]

The effort has the support of numerous elected officials, including Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, every member of the New York City Council Women’s Caucus, Congresswomen, U.S. Senators, as well as historians, foundations, and others.[15]

The Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument is being created by sculptor Meredith Bergmann,[16] who in July 2018 was chosen out of 91 artists who applied for the commission to create the statue.[17]

The New York City Public Design Commission approved Bergmann’s statue design on October 21, 2019.[18] The sculpture is scheduled to be unveiled in Central Park on August 26, 2020, also celebrated as Women’s Equality Day, to mark the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote nationwide.[19][20]

Statue Design and Process

In 1995, the artist Meredith Bergmann was working on a film set in Central Park and noticed there were "no sculptures of actual women of note and accomplishment." and 23 years later she was the sculptor who was awarded the commission for the design chosen to honor women of the suffrage movement in Central Park.[21]

The call for sculptors involved a Request for Qualifications and Request for Proposals, in which Monumental Women invited sculptors to submit illustrations of previous work, curriculum vitae and their approach to the design of the monument in sketch, text form or both. 91 artists from across the nation applied. The submissions were reviewed in a blind selection process by a diverse jury consisting of art and design professionals, historians and representatives from New York City Parks and the Monumental Women.[22] Four qualified finalists were invited to submit models for the monument[23] with Bergmann ultimately receiving the commission.[24] The competition was coordinated and managed by architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP.[25]

The statue depicts Sojourner Truth speaking, Susan B. Anthony organizing, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton writing, “three essential elements of activism,” in Bergmann’s vision. Bergmann researched the women extensively, painstakingly studying every photo and description she could find in order to accurately portray not just their physical characteristics, but also their personalities.[26]

Bergmann researched the women extensively, painstakingly studying every photo and description she could find in order to accurately portray not just their physical characteristics, but also their personalities.[27] She believes it is important that a monument to them be “larger than life” to reflect the large impact that they had on history.[28]

Bergmann is working on a very tight timeline to complete the statue in time for the unveiling on August 26, 2020, the fastest she’s ever completed a work of this scale.[29] After receiving approval for her design from the New York City Public Design Commission in October 2019,[30] Bergmann immediately began creating the 9-foot-tall clay figures. The rest of the process, including making molds, casts, pouring the molten bronze, final touch-ups and patina, will take nearly all the remaining time until the scheduled unveiling on August 26, 2020.[31]

The sculpture is currently scheduled to be installed in Central part on August 26, 2020, to mark the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote nationwide.[32][33]

Criticism

The Statue Fund/Monumental Women campaign has withstood criticism during the approval process of Bergmann's statue. The initial design of the statue featured Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton holding a scroll listing the names of 22 other suffragists.[34] This was criticized as marginalizing these 22 other activists (7 of whom are women of color) and reducing them to a mere footnote. In the second maquette of the statue, the scroll was removed entirely, leaving only Stanton and Anthony.[35] This version of the statue was unanimously approved by the New York City Public Design Commission.[36]

The Commission mostly issued critiques regarding the artistic elements of the statue, but concluded their statements saying, "(...) the Commission gives approval conditioned upon the understanding that, separate from the statue of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the applicant will work to identify meaningful ways to acknowledge and commemorate women of color who played an active role in the Woman Suffrage Movement."[37] However, the monument began receiving public criticism about its lack of representation of women of color. This seemed an especially acute issue given that the subjects of the statue, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were co-editors of the first few volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage, a six-part history of the women's suffrage movement that, some scholars and journalists claim, largely omitted the contributions of black women.[38] This criticism was made despite a word search of the first three volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage finding African American woman suffragists mentioned at least 85 times, often with much detail and direct quotes. Sojourner Truth is mentioned over 50 times, Frances E. W. Harper 16 times, Mary Shadd Cary four times. Historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn said she used The History of Woman Suffrage and Stanton and Anthony’s newspaper, THE REVOLUTION, to help identify African American woman suffragists.[39]

In the wake of public criticism, the statue was redesigned yet again, this time featuring three figures: Anthony, Stanton, and Sojourner Truth.[40] Truth, an African American abolitionist, suffragist, and activist, was active in the same time as Anthony and Stanton. Many people are satisfied the inclusion of Truth as representation of women of color in the suffrage movement. However, Truth is most famous for her 1851 "Ain't I a Woman" speech,[41] and Monumental Women lists this speech as a reason for her fame. Several versions exist, as provided at The Sojourner Truth Project and the one most commonly reproduced portrays Truth as using a southern slave dialect unlikely for a New Yorker.[42] It written by Frances Dana Barker Gage, nearly twelve years after the speech was given, and the statue does not specify any version.

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References
  1. "Breaking the Bronze Ceiling: The Woman Suffrage Movement Monument". Women at the Center. 2018-07-24. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  2. CBS Sunday Morning (2019-05-26), Putting women on a pedestal, retrieved 2019-05-29
  3. Moore, Chadwick (2015-07-12). "Fighting to Bring Women in History to Central Park". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
  4. "First Ever Central Park Statue To Honor Women". 2018-07-20. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  5. "The Statue Fund Announces The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage Movement Monument Design Competition Winner". www.businesswire.com. 2018-07-19. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  6. "About » Monumental Women". Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  7. "The New York City Council - Committee on Parks and Recreation". legistar.council.nyc.gov. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  8. MAKERS. "Central Park (Finally) Builds Its First Real Female Statue". MAKERS. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  9. "The New York City Council - Committee on Parks and Recreation". legistar.council.nyc.gov. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  10. staff/jake-offenhartz (2017-01-18). "There Are Nearly 150 Historical Male Statues In NYC, And Only 5 Female Statues". Gothamist. Archived from the original on 2020-01-15. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  11. "Sculptor crafting first women's statue for Central Park". AP NEWS. 2019-11-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  12. Offenhartz, Jake. "There Are Nearly 150 Historical Male Statues In NYC, And Only 5 Female Statues". Gothamist. Archived from the original on 2019-05-24. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  13. "The Statue Fund Announces The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage Movement Monument Design Competition Winner". www.businesswire.com. 2018-07-19. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  14. Offenhartz, Jake. "There Are Nearly 150 Historical Male Statues In NYC, And Only 5 Female Statues". Gothamist. Archived from the original on 2019-05-24. Retrieved 2019-05-24.
  15. MBPO (2017-11-15). "Womens' Suffrage Events in New York". Gale Brewer. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  16. Sayej, Nadja (2018-08-02). "'It's about time': Central Park's first historical female monument to arrive in 2020". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  17. Dziemianowicz, Mikey Light, Joe. "Sculptor chosen to design the first statues of real women in Central Park". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  18. "Central Park to get first statue honoring women". AP NEWS. 2019-10-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  19. "Design unveiled for Central Park's first statue dedicated to real women". 6sqft. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  20. "Lynn Sherr: Statue of NO limitations". Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  21. Sayej, Nadja (2018-08-02). "'It's about time': Central Park's first historical female monument to arrive in 2020". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
  22. "The Statue Fund Announces The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage Movement Monument Design Competition Winner". www.businesswire.com. 2018-07-19. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  23. www.amny.com https://www.amny.com/news/central-park-suffrage-monument-1.17393320/. Retrieved 2020-01-14. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  24. "Statues of historic women coming to Central Park". www.ny1.com. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  25. "Sculptor crafting first women's statue for Central Park". AP NEWS. 2019-11-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  26. "Sculptor crafting first women's statue for Central Park". AP NEWS. 2019-11-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  27. "Sculptor crafting first women's statue for Central Park". AP NEWS. 2019-11-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  28. "CBS2 Gets Exclusive Studio Tour As Sculptor Creates First Statues Depicting Real-Life Women For Central Park". 2019-11-25. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  29. Delikat, Stacey (2019-12-13). "Sculptor finishing Central Park women's monument". FOX 5 NY. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  30. Press, Associated (2019-10-21). "New York's Central Park to erect first sculpture honoring women". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  31. "Sculptor crafting first women's statue for Central Park". AP NEWS. 2019-11-21. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  32. "Design unveiled for Central Park's first statue dedicated to real women". 6sqft. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
  33. "Lynn Sherr: Statue of NO limitations". Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved 2019-05-29.
  34. Bellafante, Ginia (2019-01-17). "Is a Planned Monument to Women's Rights Racist?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  35. "A Monument to Women's Suffrage Receives Unanimous Approval Despite Controversy". Hyperallergic. 2019-03-19. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  36. "Press Release" (PDF).
  37. "New York City Public Design Commission Meeting Minutes" (PDF).
  38. Staples, Brent (2019-05-14). "Opinion | A Whitewashed Monument to Women's Suffrage". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  39. '’African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920'’, p. 4
  40. Brown, Nicole (2019-08-13). "Sojourner Truth added to proposed women's suffrage monument in Central Park". amNewYork. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  41. "Celebrate Women's Suffrage, but Don't Whitewash the Movement's Racism". American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  42. "The Sojourner Truth Project". The Sojourner Truth Project. Retrieved 2019-11-16.


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