It is the first sculpture in Central Park to depict historical women and was created to "break the bronze ceiling".[7] Previously, the only other female figures depicted in the park were Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Juliet from Romeo and Juliet.[1][8] Original plans for the memorial included only Stanton and Anthony, but after critics raised objections to the lack of inclusion of nonwhite women, Truth was added to the design.[9][10][11]
History
Funding
Since 2013, the Statue Fund/Monumental Women campaign (originally known as the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund)[12] had been trying to "break the bronze ceiling" in Central Park by creating the park's first statue of non-fictional women there.[13][14] The phrase "break the bronze ceiling" is a reference to the common phrase "breaking the glass ceiling" with relation to the lack of statues of women in America, since only 8% of sculptures around the U.S. are of women.[8] Previously, there had been no new additions to Central Park's collection of statues since the 1950s.[12] 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."[8][11] The Parks Department rejected the original Stanton/Anthony proposal multiple times, citing a rule that required subjects to have a relevance or connection to New York City or the park. This policy has been selectively enforced in the past,[12] though proponents of the statue successfully argued that Anthony used to walk across Central Park on her daily commute.[12]
Monumental Women raised $1.5 million in mostly private funding,[15] including contributions from foundations, businesses and over 1,000 individual donations.[9][15] Several troops of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York donated cookie-sale profits,[4] and the fund received a $500,000 grant from New York Life.[15] 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.[12] Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, who was a vocal supporter of the project, and city councilwoman Helen Rosenthal also donated a combined $135,000 to the project.[16] Other supporters included elected officials, every member of the New York City Council Women's Caucus, Congresswomen, U.S. Senators, and historians.[17]
Statue design
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation issued a request for qualifications and request for proposals for the monument, which attracted 91 submissions.[4][18] A blind jury reviewed the submissions[4] and narrowed them to four qualified finalists.[19] The competition was coordinated and managed by architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle.[9] The design contract for the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument was awarded in July 2018 to sculptor Meredith Bergmann,[20][21][18] a longtime resident of Manhattan.[22] Bergmann had been thinking of a statue as early as 1995, when she worked on a film set in Central Park and noticed there were "no sculptures of actual women of note and accomplishment."[12] 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.[12][23]
Bergmann's design was intended to fit the park's neoclassical architecture while being suitable for its location.[24] 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.[9] She believed it is important that a monument to them be "larger than life" to reflect the large impact that they had on history.[25]
The first design faced criticism for not including other suffragettes;[23] in response, Bergmann revised the statue to include Black activist Sojourner Truth.[26][27] The revised statue shows Truth collaborating at a table with Anthony and Stanton,[27] with each representing the three elements of activism, "Sojourner Truth is speaking, Susan B. Anthony is organizing, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton is writing."[28] The scroll was omitted. The New York City Public Design Commission approved Bergmann's statue design on October 21, 2019.[29][30]
Creation and dedication
After the commission gave its approval, discussions continued regarding the framing of Truth, Anthony, and Stanton as collaborators.[8][31] Bergmann worked on a tight timeline to complete the statue in time for the unveiling, stating it was the fastest she has ever completed a work of this scale.[32] After receiving approval, Bergmann immediately began creating the 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.[9]
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.[9][33][34] 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.[8]
Criticism
The monument's initial design faced significant criticism, as it featured 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.[35] This design was criticized for reducing the roles of the other activists (seven of whom are nonwhite women) by portraying Stanton and Anthony being above the scroll, implicating that the two are standing on all of those named below them.[8][35] In the second maquette of the statue, the scroll was removed entirely, leaving only Stanton and Anthony.[36] This version of the statue was unanimously approved by the New York City Public Design Commission.[37]
The Commission conditionally approved the monument while requiring that the applicants "work to identify meaningful ways to acknowledge and commemorate nonwhite women who played an active role in the Woman Suffrage Movement".[38] The monument began receiving public criticism about its lack of representation of nonwhite women.[8] Statue fund organizers Miedzian and Feldman claimed that 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.[39] 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.[40] 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."[11]
Truth's inclusion, intended to symbolize cross-racial collaboration and acknowledge the role of Black women in the suffrage movement, sparked further debate. One 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."[8] 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, which allowed Black men to vote.[8]
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