 | | The sculptor Meredith Bergmann putting the finishing touches on her suffragist sculpture, slated to be unveiled in Central Park on Aug. 26.Yael Malka for The New York Times |
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“I wanted to show women working together.” |
— Meredith Bergmann, the sculptor chosen to make a monument honoring suffragists |
Across the country, monuments honoring racist figures are being defaced and toppled. In New York’s Central Park, one statue is taking shape that aims to amend not only racial but also gender disparities in public art: A 14-foot-tall bronze monument of Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, three of the more prominent leaders in the nationwide fight for women’s right to vote. |
Called the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, it is to be unveiled Aug. 26 to commemorate the 100th anniversary this month of the constitutional amendment that finally guaranteed women that right, depicts the three figures gathered around a table for what seems to be a discussion or a strategy meeting. Anthony stands in the middle, holding a pamphlet that reads “Votes for Women”; Stanton, seated to her left, holds a pen, presumably taking notes; and Truth appears to be in midsentence. |
“I wanted to show women working together,” said Meredith Bergmann, the sculptor chosen from dozens of artists to create the statue. “I kept thinking of women now, working together in some kitchen on a laptop, trying to change the world.” |
It will be the park’s first — and only — monument honoring real women, located on Literary Walk. In its 167-year history, the park has been a leafy, lush home to about two dozen statues of men, mostly white, and fictional or mythical female characters (Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare’s Juliet, and the Angel of the Waters, the winged woman atop Bethesda Fountain) but no historical women. |
New York City as a whole hasn’t been very inclusive either: Of the 150 statues honoring historical figures, only five depict women, according to She Built NYC, the city’s official campaign, started last year, to increase female representation in public art. And in 2011, just over seven percent of the nearly 5,200 public outdoor statues across the country represented women, according to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Art Inventories Catalog. |
“The fact that nobody, for a long time, even noticed that women were missing in Central Park — what does that say about the invisibility of women?” said Pam Elam, president of Monumental Women. “There is a responsibility to not only create a beautiful work of art but to have that art reflect the reality of the lives of all the people who see it.” |
In 2014, a group of volunteers created Monumental Women (initially called the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund Inc.), a nonprofit with a mission of campaigning and raising funds for the suffragist statue in Central Park — the journey that from concept to creation ended up being a long and winding one. |
 | | A clay model of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, featuring Susan B. Anthony, standing, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth, seated.Michael Bergmann |
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Ms. Bergmann said it was “pretty humbling” to be making such a monumental work, adding that every single creative decision was carefully considered. |
In the research phase, Ms. Bergmann, who in 2003 created the Boston Women’s Memorial, featuring Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley and Lucy Stone, read a lot, she said, and spoke to Stanton’s great-great-granddaughter, Coline Jenkins-Sahlin, for more insight. |
She then spent months creating clay models of the monument, getting them approved and then creating various different molds for the molten metal. |
For their faces, she drew from multiple sources. “I never copy a photograph,” she said, “but I take all the photographs available and study them and try to come up with a face that will express more than one moment in the life of this person, with hints of their youthful face, their old face, their angry face and their happy face.” |
 | | Meredith Bergmann at the foundry in New York.Yael Malka for The New York Times |
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Their outfits carry “Easter eggs” — symbols and clues that speak to the social context or their personalities, Ms. Bergmann explained. Sunflower motifs are carved into Stanton’s dress because she had used the pseudonym Sunflower when writing editorials for The Lily newspaper in Seneca Falls, N.Y., Ms. Bergmann said. Anthony has a cameo around her neck depicting Minerva — the Roman goddess of strategy and wisdom. Truth wears her signature shawl — the tassels appear to be blowing in the wind — and a striped brocade jacket with laurel wreaths woven in to symbolize victory and honor. |
That they are all attired in long skirts and dresses is significant too. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women fighting for social reforms — including Stanton — adopted what came to be known as the “Bloomer costume,” knee-length dresses worn over trousers, which offered freedom and respite from the more constricting corsets and floor-length dresses that were standard at the time. |
“Stanton once said how wonderful it was to be able to climb a flight of stairs holding a baby in one arm and a candle in the other without having to hold up 10 pounds of wool skirt and petticoats,” Bergmann noted. |
But the outfits were such radical departures from the norm that they invited intense mockery and distracted from broader conversations about women’s rights, so the suffrage fighters gave them up. Ms. Bergmann said this informed her own choice to have the statues in voluminous skirts. |
Though the campaign to install the statue took more than six years (seven if you include the months of discussions that took place before the nonprofit was formed), Monumental Women selected Ms. Bergmann’s design in 2018, giving the artist two years — a short time in the sculpting world, she noted — to bring the suffragists to life. |
 | | Details of the statue of three suffrage fighters: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth.Yael Malka for The New York Times |
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When Monumental Women unveils the statue later this month (in a ceremony at 8 a.m. on Aug. 26 that can be streamed at monumentalwomen.org), the organization said it plans to issue a challenge to municipalities all over the country to include more women and people of color in their public spaces. Part of the nonprofit’s mission is to help other communities navigate the kind of red tape and bureaucratic hurdles that they encountered. The nonprofit will also kick off an online educational campaign and has proposed providing books on women’s history to all of New York City’s public school libraries. |
“For the people who might think ‘OK, you’ve broken the bronze ceiling, good for you, now your work is done’ — no, absolutely not, we are here to stay,” Ms. Elam said. |
Here are four articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Setsuko Thurlow was 13 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times |
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- “I am one of those who can tell a firsthand story of human suffering that the bomb caused.” Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima 75 years ago this month, has used the power of her personal story to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons. [Read the story]
- “I have been given two options: either resign or get fired.” Mothers across the country are being laid off, as legal protections for workers in the pandemic fall short, according to the Center for WorkLife Law. [Read the Opinion]
- “My own experiences of sexual abuse as a child and an adolescent have undoubtedly been vital motivators.” Diana Russell, who studied violence against women and popularized the term “femicide,” died last month at 81. [Read the obituary]
- “Nice White Parents.” A new podcast from Serial, a New York Times Company, investigates what happened when a group of white families arrived at a predominately Black school. [Listen]
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In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson. |
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