A temporary statue of the iconic New York photographer Diane Arbus stands at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast entrance to Central Park, NYC. When the statue was unveiled, it increased the number of sculptures of real women in Central Park to two. The first one was Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, unveiled on August 26th, 2020, depicting the women’s rights leaders Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Diane Arbus’s statue will be on view till August 14th, 2022.
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was born and raised in a wealthy Jewish family in New York City, NY. After getting married, she and her husband established a commercial photography business. After ten years, Arbus left the company wishing to develop her artistic expression via photography. She wandered the streets of the city, taking pictures of its people. Her wide range of photography subjects included strippers, carnival performers, nudists, people with dwarfism, children, mothers, couples, seniors, and middle-class families. Her work was original and helped normalize marginalized groups and establish photography as a form of art. She was 48 years old when she committed suicide.
The British artist Gillian Wearing depicted Arbus in her natural position. She is holding her special camera, looking at her subject.
It is an unusual sculpture in Central Park. It stands on the ground and not on a pedestal, and it honors a woman, while most of the statues in the park honor men. The modest but powerful sculpture captures the passersbys’ attention while entering the park, and they stop to interact and learn more about her.
Among Wearing’s other works is a statue of the British suffragist Millicent Fawcett on Parliament Square in London. It is the first and only statue of a woman in the square.
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