The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

10 F THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020

When Eleanor Jordan first visited the Ken-
tucky Capitol as an 11-year-old, she didn’t
see herself, a Black girl, represented in the
grand halls. “I saw only paintings, statues,
busts of white men,” said the former state
legislator. “That sent a profound message to
me as a little girl that ‘You have no place
here. No one of your gender or race has
done anything significant enough for peo-
ple to remember.’ ”
A year from now, the view will be a little
different for students touring the Capitol,
once a statue of Nettie Depp, a teacher and
administrator who was elected as a county
school superintendent seven years before
women got the vote, is unveiled in August.
The statue is the result of a multiyear ef-
fort by the sculptor Amanda Matthews that
began in 2014, when a sentence in a newspa-
per article caught her eye: “The closest
thing to a woman honored by a full-scale
statue on public property in Kentucky is
Carolina, Gen. John Breckinridge Castle-
man’s horse.”
Ms. Matthews made it her mission to
change that.
In a way, it’s not surprising that it took
this long to have a statue of a woman in the
state Capitol, said Kentucky’s lieutenant
governor, Jacqueline Coleman. “There’s a
lack of women leaders at the helm, which
leads to gaps like this, and who we decide to
honor and how we value history.”
Statues are a signal of who is valued in a
society, and judging by the numbers, that
would be men. A 2017 CNN analysis found
that only 10 percent of public outdoor sculp-
tures in the United States were of women.
But public monuments are coming under
increased scrutiny, the values they repre-
sent often proving less resilient than their
bronze and marble forms. At the same time,
grass-roots support for new statues is grow-
ing more diverse.
“As these historically marginalized popu-
lations become more vocal and have been
able to exert more agency in the public
sphere,” said Joy Giguere, who teaches his-
tory at Pennsylvania State University in
York, “we see greater calls for, essentially,
self-representation.”
Ms. Matthews, who owns the design-and-
build firm and foundry Prometheus Art in
Kentucky with her husband, Brad Connell,
began inquiring about how to get a statue of
a woman in the state Capitol. She was con-

nected with Ms. Jordan, a former state rep-

resentative from Louisville who was then

executive director of the Kentucky Com-

mission on Women, who worked with the

Commission to select Nettie Depp as the

subject.

Ms. Jordan warned Ms. Matthews when

they began that it would be an uphill climb,

and it was, particularly when it came to

funding. Ms. Matthews and her husband

have committed $40,000 of their own

money, and they have taken out a loan to

continue work as they continue to fund-

raise.

The 7-foot-4 statue, plus plinth and instal-

lation costs, will total $167,000. Public statu-

ary is expensive, requiring extensive fund-

raising and grant applications.

This year, Indiana announced a series of

substantial one-time grants aligned with

the suffrage centennial to support the pres-

ervation of women’s history across the

state, “to make sure that more places asso-

ciated with women’s contributions in Indi-

ana are memorialized,” said Leah Nahmias

of Indiana Humanities.

The grantees are selecting the artists;

one project, a statue of Sojourner Truth, will

be by a male sculptor. Men dominate the

field of large-scale sculpture, especially,

said Ms. Matthews, when it comes to the

foundries, metal suppliers and engineers.

But women such as Ms. Matthews are chal-

lenging the norm and pursuing projects

honoring women.

Meredith Bergmann, who created the

Boston Women’s Memorial, also sculpted

the recently unveiled Women’s Rights Pio-

neers Monument in Central Park.

In 2013, when Monumental Women, a

nonprofit organized to promote statues of

women in New York, began campaigning

for the Central Park monument, only five of

New York City’s public statues were of his-

toric women. The Central Park monument,

featuring Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and Sojourner Truth, makes six.

“What does it say to little girls and little

boys when you walk in that park and the

only female representations are Alice in

Wonderland, Mother Goose, Juliet with Ro-

meo,” said Pam Elam, president of Monu-

mental Women. “Beyond that, it breaks my

heart that all those years, and all those peo-

ple walking through Central Park, quite a

large number of them never noticed real

women were missing.”

Jane DeDecker, whose works include a

statue of Harriet Tubman at the William J.

Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., sub-

mitted a design for the Central Park monu-

ment that is now proposed for Washington.

Both Ms. Bergmann and Ms. DeDecker

made statues for Converse College, in South

Carolina, as part of a series commissioned

to depict prominent women.

Vinnie Bagwell is creating “Victory Be-

yond Sims,” a monument to replace the Cen-

tral Park statue of J. Marion Sims, a gyne-

cologist who experimented on enslaved

Black women. And as Ms. Matthews was

working on Nettie Depp, she also sculpted

the pioneering Black journalist Alice Dun-

nigan, and in 2019 received the commission

for the Roosevelt Island memorial to the in-

vestigative journalist Nellie Bly.

The Bly memorial, to be installed in 2021,

is a turning point for Ms. Matthews. “The

Girl Puzzle,” named for Ms. Bly’s first arti-

cle, is a chance to highlight not only the leg-

endary reporter, but also the marginalized

girls and women she championed.

Ms. Bagwell, who sculpted Ella Fitzger-

ald for Yonkers, N.Y., said she would like

communities to take stock of who is repre-

sented and look for the people and stories

worth recognition. “I really want to see pub-

lic art about the everyday people that make

that place great,” she said.

Communities that care about their stat-

ues care for them. When the Boston Wom-

en’s Memorial was installed, Ms. Bergmann

said, people put a sweater on Lucy Stone

and stuck “I Voted” stickers on the women.

“Every winter, a scarf appears on [Ella

Fitzgerald’s] neck,” Ms. Bagwell said. “Peo-

ple put flowers in her hands on her birthday

every year. People adore Ella Fitzgerald

and they show it through the sculpture.”

Stories like this stand in relief against

calls for removing controversial monu-

ments. Both prove that statues have an ef-

fect on the public.

On Sept. 19, after the death of Ruth Bader

Ginsburg, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo an-

nounced that New York would honor the Su-

preme Court justice with a statue in Brook-

lyn, her hometown. On Oct. 15, his office

named a committee to oversee the project,

including the selection of an artist.

Ms. Matthews is ready.

By SHANNON EBLEN

Clockwise from top left: The

Women’s Rights Pioneers

Monument in Central Park,

sculpted by Meredith

Bergmann, which depicts

Sojourner Truth, Susan B.

Anthony and Elizabeth Cady

Stanton; a rendering of “The

Girl Puzzle,” a monument

honoring the journalist Nellie

Bly that is planned for

Roosevelt Island; and the

statue of Ella Fitzgerald by

the sculptor Vinnie Bagwell

in Yonkers, N.Y.

A Different Sort of Pedestal

Public monuments are beginning to

represent women’s achievements.

YAEL MALKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES AMANDA MATTHEWS

G. PAUL BURNETT/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Untitled Rayograph(detail), 1922, Man Ray. Gelatin silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum. © Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAGP.

Text and design: © J. Paul Getty Trust

Visit Getty from home with art, podcasts, videos, and

more.Read,watch,listen,andlearnatgetty.edu/art.

Explore Art

with Us

.