NYC only has 5 statues representing women - today, New Yorkers are trying to change that
On its 150 public statues, New York City only has 5 representing real women. In recent years, debates concerning monuments have emerged across the United States. Today, New York City is tackling the issue surrounding statues of women. As 2020 marks the 100 th anniversary of women’s right to vote, new efforts are being made in New York City to build new statues of women in public spaces.
On August 26 th , 2019, ten bronze statues of women were unveiled in Midtown, Manhattan as an homage to Women’s Equality Day, a day celebrating women’s suffrage. Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett, Justice Ginsburg… are among the women represented in Marc and Gillie’s Statues for Equality project. The Australian couple chose to launch this initiative in NYC, the first stop of a global journey. Marc Schattner strives for there to be “the same amounts of female statues as there are of male statues.” “Once we achieve that globally, we believe there will be true equality in public art, which is our mission.”
At the moment, the statues are “touring around Manhattan […] so that everybody […] gets to enjoy them and come and see them” says Gillie Schattner. “We would love them to remain in a public space”. The ten statues are currently located at 32 Old Slip, near Wall Street.
Tinamarie Amore, 31 years-old, works in the area and discovered the statues during her lunch break. “I was learning about what each woman accomplished. It’s very inspiring! Especially that lady… Tererai Trent. She stood out to me the most because it says here that she married young and had three children by 18 […]everybody else is like an entertainer, but she came from absolute poverty and hardship, to having a PHD”. “I learned something new today” she says.
Marc Schattner explains their use of bronze as a material. “These statues will be around for 500 hundred years, so it means that generations after generations could see them.”
The Monumental Women and Statue Fund is also striving to make a historical impact in New York City. Ellen Chesler, the secretary of the non-profit organization, says a monument honoring women’s suffrage will be unveiled on August 26th, 2020 “at the crossroads of central park”.
Chesler stresses the importance of representing real women. There are indeed more statues of allegorical women and fictional characters — such as Alice Wonderland — then there are of historical characters. “Representing the agency of women and cracking the bronze ceiling is critically important” for representation. “Not just the glass ceiling, but the bronze ceiling”. A form of representation she considers of the upmost importance for children. “I remember when I was a young mother, wheeling strollers through the park and having my son look up to […] Daniel Webster […] and nobody for my daughter to admire, nobody to represent the agency of women in history”.
As of today, these public statues are all located in Manhattan. Something the city is trying to change through its She Built NYC campaign. In total, five monuments and statues of women will be unveiled in each borough. The first one being a monument to Shirley Chisholm at the entrance of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, due late 2020.
Statues of women also lack presence from the digital space. Phyllis A. Sears, a former manager at Prospect Park Alliance, is spending her retirement years on Herstorical Monuments, a passion project she created in April 2018. Herstorical Monuments aims at adding statues and monuments to women on google maps and wikipedia. “I found that a lot of these statues were not listed on google maps.” Sears also relies on social media to build up her project. She uses facebook, instagram and twitter to inform on the new initiatives taken in NYC and therefore “add a little bit to the conversation by trying to get the statues that do exist up into the digital world”.
A project aiming at making history more female, as disclosed through the name Herstorical Monument. “Instead of his-storical you put her-storical”.
“I see history now through women’s stories […] I find it endlessly fascinating” she says.
