An eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Marian Anderson welcomes everyone at the entrance of the Twichell Auditorium at the Zimmerli Performance Center since September 11th, 2006.
Marian Anderson was one of the best contralto singers in the US, who performed worldwide, and a civil rights activist. She was the first African-American singer to perform at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the White House. Among her iconic performances is the concert she gave on the Lincoln Memorial steps on Easter Sunday, 1939, and the statue depicts her in a pose from this performance.
Converse College chose to portray Anderson as a role model of a woman who overcame racial and gender obstacles to living a life full of creation and activism. Anderson is one of four statues of women who recently joined the campus’s landscape, aiming to inspire the students and increase the commemoration of women in the public space.
The statue was created by the famous American artist, Meredith Bergmann who also designed and sculptured two of the most important women memorials in the US – the Boston Women’s Memorial and the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, NYC.
The statue was unveiled first at the Marian Anderson Historical Residence & Museum and then traveled to its permanent location in Converse College.
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