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Women's Rights Pioneers Monument

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(Redirected from Monumental Women) Sculpture by Meredith Bergmann in Central Park, Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Women's Rights Pioneers Monument
Subject
LocationNew York City, New York, U.S.
Coordinates40°46′14″N 73°58′21″W / 40.7705°N 73.9725°W / 40.7705; -73.9725

The Women's Rights Pioneers Monument is a sculpture by Meredith Bergmann. It was installed in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, on August 26 (Women's Equality Day), 2020. The sculpture is located at the northwest corner of Literary Walk along The Mall, the widest pedestrian path in Central Park. The sculpture commemorates and depicts Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883), Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), pioneers in the suffrage movement who advocated women's right to vote and who were pioneers of the larger movement for women's rights.

It is the first sculpture in Central Park to depict historical women and was created to "break the bronze ceiling" as, previously, the only other female figures depicted in the park was Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. Original plans for the memorial included only Stanton and Anthony, but after critics raised objections to the lack of inclusion of women of color, Truth was added to the design.

History

Since 2013, the Statue Fund/Monumental Women campaign (originally known as the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund) worked with the city to "break the bronze ceiling" in Central Park to create the first statue of non-fictional women in the Park's 165-year history. Breaking the bronze ceiling is a phrase used to link “breaking the glass ceiling” with the lack of statues of women in America, since only 8% of sculptures around the U.S. are of women. Previously, there had been no new additions to the statue collection in Central Park since the 1950s. The campaign was run by Gary Ferdman and Myriam Miedzian, who argued that Stanton and Anthony were ideal subjects for the monument based on their legacy as "long lasting leaders of the largest non-violent revolution in our nation's history." The Parks Department rejected the original Stanton/Anthony proposal multiple times. This is because of their policy that statues need to have some relevance or connection to New York City or Central Park. This policy has been selectively enforced in the past, but the statue was eventually approved when evidence was presented that Stanton and Anthony had a connection to Central Park. Proponents of the statue were able to prove that Anthony used to walk across Central Park on her daily commute.

Monumental Women raised $1.5 million in mostly private funding to pay for the statue, including contributions from foundations, businesses and over 1,000 individual donations. Several troops of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York have donated money from their cookie sales to the fund and the fund has received a $500,000 grant from New York Life. Additionally, Girl Scout Troop 3484 of New York protested the lack of female representation in New York’s public monuments which brought national attention to the current effort of raising funds for the suffragist’s statue. Manhattan borough president, Gale Brewer, who was a vocal supporter of the project, and Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal also donated a total of $135,000 to the project. Other supporters of the effort included numerous elected officials, every member of the New York City Council Women's Caucus, Congresswomen, U.S. Senators, and historians.

The Women's Rights Pioneers Monument was created by sculptor Meredith Bergmann, who in July 2018 was chosen out of 91 artists who applied for the commission to create the statue. Bergmann was thrilled to apply for the position, as a Manhattan resident of two decades. Her husband was born and raised in Manhattan, and together they raised their son there. The first design of the statue, featuring Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton with a scroll that contained the names of other rhetors, faced criticism for not including other suffragettes.

In response, Bergmann revised the statue to include Black activist Sojourner Truth collaborating at a table with Anthony and Stanton, with each representing the three elements of activism, "Sojourner Truth is speaking, Susan B. Anthony is organizing, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton is writing." The scroll was omitted. The New York City Public Design Commission approved Bergmann's statue design on October 21, 2019, although there was still conversation about the framing of Truth, Anthony, and Stanton as collaborators. The sculpture was 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. Additionally, supporters of the movement, such as Pam Elam, Gale Brewer, sculptor Meredith Bergmann, and former New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, were present and gave speeches at the unveiling.

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." The initial statue design was based on a photo of Anthony and Stanton side by side, with a long scroll tumbling down into a ballot box. The design received some controversy over the inclusion of names of other suffragettes on the scroll, with The New York Times stating that Anthony and Stanton "are standing on the names of these other women". 23 years later she was awarded the commission for the design chosen to honor women of the suffrage movement in Central Park.

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 the New York City Parks Department and the Monumental Women. Four qualified finalists were invited to submit models for the monument with Bergmann ultimately receiving the commission. The competition was coordinated and managed by architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP.

In designing the monument, Bergmann was tasked with adhering to the neoclassical genre previously established in Central Park. Given the nature and prestige of the location, the commemorative privilege associated with constructing a new monument required consideration of several expectations for Bergmann's design. 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. She believes it is important that a monument to them be "larger than life" to reflect the large impact that they had on history. Bergmann worked on a tight timeline to complete the statue in time for the unveiling on August 26, 2020, the fastest she has ever completed a work of this scale. After receiving approval for her design from the New York City Public Design Commission in October 2019, 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, took nearly all the remaining time until the scheduled unveiling on August 26, 2020.

The sculpture was installed in Central Park on August 25, 2020, to mark the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote.

Criticism

The monument's initial design faced significant criticism, complicating the approval process. The initial design of the statue features only Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women lean over a scroll listing the names of 22 other influential women's rights advocates. This design was criticized for reducing these 22 other activists (seven of whom are women of color) to footnotes, portraying Stanton and Anthony being above the scroll implicating that the two are standing on all of those named below them. In the second maquette of the statue, the scroll was removed entirely, leaving only Stanton and Anthony. This version of the statue was unanimously approved by the New York City Public Design Commission.

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." However, the monument began receiving public criticism about its lack of representation of women of color, and claims of "whitewashing the suffrage movement." Statue fund organizers Miedzian and Feldman denied this by claiming that a word search of the first three volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage, which Stanton and Anthony co-edited, found African American woman suffragists mentioned at least 85 times. Scholars have also claimed that Anthony and Stanton's advocacy for women's suffrage included themes of anti-Blackness, especially following the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, which allowed Black men to vote. Particularly, racism against black women became a key part of validating white women's right to vote. Anthony herself is quoted as saying, "I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman." Stanton wrote a "letter to the editor" of the New York Standard regarding the political status of Black men compared to women. Fellow activist Angela Davis said, "Its indisputably racist ideas indicate that Stanton’s understanding of the relationship between the battle for Black Liberation and the struggle for women’s rights was, at best, superficial.” Historian Martha Jones wrote that the monument promoted the myth of the suffrage movement led by White women and celebrated activists steeped in racist prejudice. Jones called particularly for the inclusion of Sojourner Truth, stating that "Her vision for women's rights insisted that we imagine a nation in which women's futures were no longer troubled by color, status and other man-made differences. That is a vision worth promoting, for our daughters and for ourselves."

In the wake of public criticism, the statue was redesigned again, this time featuring three figures: Anthony, Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. Truth, an African American abolitionist, suffragist, and activist, was active in the same time as Anthony and Stanton. Many people are satisfied with the inclusion of Truth as representation of women of color in the suffrage movement. Scholar Teresa Zackodnik, for instance, describes Truth as “the Black feminist of the nineteenth century’ and as a “highly transportable symbol of black feminist difference and of the intersection of race and gender.” Zackodnik justifies the title given to Truth via her contributions as a pioneer for women's rights, abolition, the rights of free people and African Americans, but more specifically, for black women. Others, however, disagree with the depiction given Truth's opposition to Anthony and Stanton's comparison of black suffrage and female suffrage which may have overlooked black intelligence. Truth is most famous for her 1851 "Ain't I a Woman" speech, and Monumental Women lists this speech as a reason for her fame. Truth’s speech was given, at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio where she was the first woman to speak at the convention who had been formerly enslaved. 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. It was written by Frances Dana Barker Gage, nearly twelve years after the speech was given, and the statue does not specify any version. In the 1990's, Delores Tucker of the National Congress of Black Women asked Congress to add Truth to the statue because the original perpetuated the whitewashing of history. The request was originally denied due to a lack of the artist's consent, but in 2009, Congress inaugurated Sojourner Truth's statue to the Capitol.

This inclusion was meant to symbolize cross-racial collaboration and acknowledge the pivotal role of Black women in the suffrage movement. However, the revision also sparked further debate. One particular scholar, Karma Chávez, stated that the monument "integrates Truth into present-day suffrage memory without asking viewers to engage the racism that shaped the movement." Critics argued that while the monument now recognized Black women's involvement, it might also inadvertently downplay the racism inherent within some segments of the white suffrage movement, particularly in the years following the Fifteenth Amendment.

The revised monument, therefore, was seen as both a step forward in acknowledging the diverse contributions to the suffrage movement and a subject of ongoing discussions about the complexities of public memorials in representing historical narratives. Continuing discussions involve arguments for a departure from typical monuments in favor of alternative methods of historical acknowledgement for women's rights achievements. Such alternatives might manifest as counter-monuments that defy typical monument conventions. The WRPM's unveiling and the dialogues surrounding it underscore the significance of remembering the diverse and multifaceted history of women's rights activism while grappling with its historical intricacies and challenges.

See also

References

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