Monumental Women Will Donate 1/3 Size Figure of Our Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument to NYS Museum
Dear Friends,
On March 8, International Women’s Day, please join us at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York (or via streaming on the Museum’s website) for a wonderful event to celebrate and honor Women’s History. Monumental Women will donate to the Museum a 1/3 size figure of our Women's Rights Pioneers Monument in NYC Central Park. Specific details of the event will follow shortly and you can always obtain updated information on Monumental Women’s social media platforms. We are very excited about this opportunity to share the power of Women’s History with Museum visitors from around the State. Below you will find statements from our friends from the NYS Museum as well as from our WRPM artist Meredith Bergmann. See you on March 8.
Best Wishes,
Pam Elam
President, Monumental Women
I love having surprise encounters with the models for monuments, far away from the monument itself. Transported out of context, and at a scale small enough, a model may enable you to grasp the whole composition in a way you can’t when confronted with a monument at its actual, sometimes overwhelming size. In a museum, comparisons are possible with other monuments, sculptures and works of art, and this may highlight previously unnoticed historical references.
There’s also the charm of seeing something that may by now have faded into familiarity at an unexpected size, somehow more manageable. This model, 1/3 the height of the finished Women’s Rights Pioneers statues, will give visitors an overview of the complete composition, and the relationships between the three women will become evident in a new way.
I’m grateful to Monumental Women for making the preservation of this model possible, and I’m excited that the model will be exhibited at the New York State Museum, as all three of these women lived, worked and spoke out in various parts of the state of New York, not only in New York City. I hope that children who come to know the monument from seeing it small and in the museum will be delighted to see it at full scale, in dappled sunlight and shade, among other monuments in Central Park someday.
—Meredith Bergmann, Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument artist
We are excited to add the 1/3 model of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument to the collections of the New York State Museum. Made possible with the support of the organization Monumental Women, this artifact will allow the Museum to interpret and share the history of these three women who fought for suffrage and women’s rights – all New Yorkers — and tell the significant contemporary story that transpired as the Monumental Women fought for and succeeded in placing the first statue of real women in Central Park. Both stories are significant to New York history. Additionally, we hope that this sculpture inspires our student visitors to the museum. Students, who visit the New York State Museum both in person and virtually, come from all over New York State.
Through the sculpture, we will be able to share the concepts of civic engagement, government process, fundraising, and art as a medium for history telling. One important lesson from the suffragists is that one can accomplish great things even if you do not (yet) have the right to vote. For our students, who are not yet old enough to vote, this is a powerful and empowering message showing them that it is not too early to fight for change. The statue provides historic and contemporary examples of women taking action to eliminate discrimination and work toward a more equal society—hopefully it will spur our students to address the inequalities they see and experience in their own lives!
—Jennifer Lemak (Chief Curator of History) and Ashley Hopkins-Benton (Senior Historian/Curator), New York State Museum, Albany, New York
Equal Bronze for Equal Work
by Heather Nesle, Monumental Women Board Member and President, New York Life Foundation; SVP, Corporate Responsibility
With the unveiling of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in the summer of 2020, public statues of real women in NYC increased by 17%. That figure seems high at first, until you realize the drastic increase was due to the paltry number of existing statues of real women – 5 across the entire city. The numbers aren’t much better nationally. Less than 7% of public monuments honor real women.
And the dollars going to nonprofits in support of women and girls are equally miniscule. Even though there are more than 50,000 organizations dedicated to women and girls in the U.S., less than 2% of all philanthropic support goes to these organization.
Does anyone think this lack of public recognition and monetary support leads to more visibility for women? Of course it doesn’t. You can’t be what you can’t see, and you can’t make impactful change without real investment. That is why Monumental Women is working to publicly recognize more prominent women across the country, while raising awareness of the causes and issues that these women championed. And we stand as partners with others who are pursuing these public efforts in their towns and cities.
Please join us in this quest as we continue to journey toward a more equitable rendering of our country’s vast, remarkable herstory.
Monumental Women: Statue Spotlight
Frances Munds Statue in Arizona
by Mary Melcher, Board Member, Arizona Women’s History Alliance
The Arizona Women’s History Alliance (AzWHA) has been working for four years to fund and install a statue of Frances Willard Munds in the plaza opposite the Arizona State Capitol. At this time, there is no statue of an individual woman on Arizona state land. Frances Munds led the successful campaign for Arizona women’s suffrage. Her leadership of the Arizona Equal Suffrage Association began in 1909. After trying unsuccessfully to gain the vote through the territorial legislature, she and other suffragists decided to use an initiative measure to gain the vote, after Arizona became a state in February 1912. Suffragists convinced 66% of the male electorate to vote “Yes” to amend the state constitution in November 1912, eight years before the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. When the statue is installed in the mall across from the state capitol, many of the 70,000 people (including 20,000 school children) who visit the mall annually will see the statue and learn about how women became voting citizens.
The AzWHA thanks Monumental Women for your support to the Frances Willard Munds Statue campaign. At this time, we’ve raised $220,000 of the necessary $270,000 to finish the project. We hope to finish fundraising in the next few months and install the statue this year. It has been completed and cast in bronze. Construction of the site still needs to be done. Once it’s installed, the Frances Munds statue will also provide a strong visual display of women’s leadership and persistence in the face of adversity. By furthering awareness of women’s history and voting rights, this project will benefit the multiple generations who visit the state capitol, as wells as the students who visit the State Capitol Museum.
