City Approves Central Park's First Monument Honoring Women

CENTRAL PARK, NY — Central Park's "Bronze Ceiling" will be broken in 2020 when a new statue honoring three icons of the women's suffrage movement is installed on the park's famed Literary Walk.

The New York City Public Design Commission voted Monday to approve a statue honoring Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth for the site. The monument will be the first in Central Park's 166-year history to depict a real-life woman. Other statues in the park that feature women depict fictional characters.

An organization called the Monumental Women's Statue Fund launched a campaign in 2014 to construct Central Park's first monument honoring real women.

"With this statue we are finally breaking the bronze ceiling. It’s fitting that the first statue of real women in Central Park depicts three New York women who dedicated their lives to fighting for women’s rights," Pam Elam, President of the statue fund, said in a statement. "This statue conveys the power of women working together to bring about revolutionary change in our society."

The group has raised $1.5 million to construct the statue, and selected sculptor Meredith Bergmann to design the work. Bergmann's design has undergone a number of modifications since it was first revealed, including the addition of Sojourner Truth to the monument. The decision to add Truth was made after an initial design — which had already been approved by the city — was criticized for "whitewashing" the women's suffrage monument.

Historians who criticized the statue fund's first design voiced concerns that the new statue would misrepresent Sojourner Truth's legacy after the redesign was revealed. The scholars said that although all three women fought for women's suffrage, they held widely different beliefs on issues such as whether black men should be allowed to vote. Historians also cast doubt on the historical accuracy of depicting Truth, Stanton and Anthony sitting around the same table. Concerns about the new design forced the Public Design Commission to postpone an earlier vote on the project in September.

Bergmann, the sculptor of the monument, maintained that the design is meant to portray a symbolic take on the history of the women's suffrage movement, not a specific moment in history.

"Like the women I’m portraying, my work is meant to raise questions and to provoke thought. My hope is that all people, but especially young people, will be inspired by this image of women of different races, different religious backgrounds and different economic status working together to change the world," Bergmann said in a statement.

The Monumental Women's Statue Fund first announced in 2017 that a monument to the women's suffrage movement would be installed on The Mall and Literary Walk in Central Park by August 2020 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which extended the right to vote to women. The statue will be the first new commemorative monument in Central Park since 1965.