When it comes to representing real women, it’s fair to say that Central Park has been somewhat behind the times. Sure, the park features delightful fictional women and fantastical statues of imaginary women — but to date, the only named female icon is an eleven-foot-tall bronze casting of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Not a single one of the park’s 23 historically-based statues honors a real, influential woman.
Change, however, is on the horizon. On October 21st, New York City’s Public Design Commission officially approved the preliminary design for a bronze-and-granite statue that will feature three of America’s most prominent suffragettes: Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The project is backed by Monumental Women, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing female representation to the park’s cohort of historical monuments.
“42 million people visit Central Park every year,” Namitha Luthra, a member of the nonprofit’s board of directors commented for Quartz, “They deserve to see real women — women who built this country, who helped realize the American promise, who helped expand our definition of we the people.”
The project is on track to complete next fall. The finished statue will officially be unveiled on August 26th, 2020, to honor the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and will be installed at Central Park’s Literary Walk.
The 14-foot-high monument shows the three women crowded around a table with their books piled around them, engaged in discussion and the pursuit of change. The statue emanates intensity, and the implied strain between Truth and her companions hints at the underlying tensions over race that were inherent to the suffragette movement.
Interestingly, the current plan for the statue is a revision. Initially, the figure depicted only Anthony and Stanton — and quickly came under censure when critics pointed out that the statue was not only racially homogenous but also featured two women who were known for their racist rhetoric. These concerns have been addressed in the new version, which brings in Sojourner Truth (Author, “Ain’t I A Woman?”) to both provide a counterweight to the other feminists’ racial perspectives and create a more diverse representation of the suffragette movement.
For project sculptor Meredith Bergmann, the change had profound meaning. “My hope is that all people, but especially young people, will be inspired by this image of women of different races, different religious backgrounds, and different economic status working together to change the world,” she shared following the Commission’s vote on the project.
This statue has been in development for years. Monumental Women first initiated its efforts to design and identify a place for the statue in 2014. The $1.5 million project was primarily funded by public contributions and received considerable funding from Girl Scout cookie sales. New York City gave $135,000 to the efforts.
Today, the project is on-track to rectify — at least in some small part — the lack of representation for female changemakers in Central Park.
As Pam Elam, the president of Monumental Women, recently put the matter in a press release: “With this statue, we are finally breaking the bronze ceiling.”
It will be exciting to see what new heights New York ascends to without such a barrier.
Originally published on NovelPropertyVentures.com
