The Gender Imbalance of Public Statues in New York City
Until the summer of 2020, all 23 statues in New York City’s Central Park exclusively honoured men. The only references to women throughout the 843-acre park were three fictitious characters: Mother Goose, Alice in Wonderland, and William Shakespeare’s Juliet.
Hoping to increase female representation, Meredith Bergmann and Amanda Matthews are two female sculptors continuing to highlight the lack of statues of women in public spaces throughout New York City. The pair are actively constructing new sculptures featuring themes of empowerment and suffrage and depicting the pioneers that fought for women’s rights.
Meredith Bergmann, Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, 2020.
On August 26th, 2020, Bergmann’s bronze Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument was unveiled as the first legitimate statue of a woman in New York City’s Central Park. The date is significant as it marked the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Bergmann’s fourteen-foot-tall sculptural group depicts three women: Elizabeth Cady Stanton who organized the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, Susan B. Anthony, also a prominent women’s rights activist, and Sojourner Truth, an African American abolitionist and champion of women’s rights. All three women were native New Yorkers. The monument stands prominently on a heavily pedestrian trafficked pathway, on the southern end in Central Park, known as Literary Walk.
Meredith Bergmann working on Women’s Rights Pioneers Monuments.
Bergmann’s statue of the three women, originally slated to be placed on Central Park West and West 77th Street–adjacent to Central Park–would have meant a continued exclusion of women’s sculptures from inside Central Park. The difficult task of convincing New York’s Parks Department officials that statues of real women should be inside Central Park fell on Coline Jenkins, the great-great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 2014, Jenkins asked Mitchell Silver, then the Commissioner of New York’s Parks Department, “Do you know that Central Park has no statues of women?” Silver replied, “I did not know that…I’ll look into it.” He kept his word and a month later the Statue Fund was established. Six years later the Women’s Rights Pioneer Monument was unveiled at its current location inside the park’s perimeter.
Adding to New York City’s statues of Joan of Arc, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and Bergmann’s Women’s Rights Pioneer’s Monument, sculptor Amanda Matthews’ 2021 The Girl Puzzle added five sculptures of faces of women. Mathews’ installation honours investigative journalist Nellie Bly who faked insanity in order to go undercover at a New York women’s asylum in 1887. Bly’s intention was to expose oppressive, unsanitary, violent, and inhumane conditions that women within the asylum endured. Bly spent ten long days in the well-known women’s asylum on Blackwell Island–present-day Roosevelt Island–the location where Bly’s statue currently stands. Bly’s journalistic bravery prompted legislation that ensured the safety and care of women in mental health facilities in New York. In addition to Mathews’ bronze sculpture of Nellie Bly, four additional bronze sculptures of Asian, African American, young, old, immigrant, and queer women are part of the five-sculpture ensemble. The Girl Puzzle gives visibility and value to all women.
The lack of women’s statues in public spaces was also addressed by former New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, whose administration created She Built NYC, a public-arts campaign created to honour women who made remarkable contributions to the city of New York. The first group of women’s statues will be distributed throughout the city’s five boroughs between 2022 and 2023 and include remarkable women’s rights trailblazers.
Amanda Matthews working on The Girl Puzzle, 2021.
Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first woman to seek the nomination for U.S. President, will have her statue showcased in the borough of Brooklyn. Jazz singer Billie Holiday’s statue will be in the borough of Queens, and Elizabeth Jennings Graham, who ended transit segregation in New York in 1864, will have her statue on the island of Manhattan. A pioneer in paediatrics, Dr. Helena Rodriguez Trias’s statue will be located in the borough of the Bronx, and Kathleen Walker, the keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse, will have her statue on Staten Island. Additionally, Marsha P. Johnson, a prominent gay rights activist during the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and Silvia Rivera, a Trans-gender advocate, will have their statues in Manhattan proper.
These additions reflect the current momentum to correct the absence of female sculptures in and around New York City. Bergmann’s Women’s Rights Pioneer Monument (2020) and Mathews’ The Girl Puzzle (2021) are solid foundations on which New York City can continue to build.
Lisa Black-Cohen
Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED