On the opening day of the 2019 US Open, the trailblazer African-American professional tennis player Althea Gibson got the recognition she deserved when her statue got dedicated outside Arthur Ashe Stadium, the biggest tennis stadium in the world, named after the pioneer African-American tennis player, Arthur Ashe. Althea Gibson (1927-2003) played tennis as a kid in Harlem, New York City. She started playing professionally in her teenage years and, from 1947 to 1957, won the American Tennis Association women’s titles. In 1950, Gibson became the first African-American to compete in the US Nationals. A year later, Gibson started competing internationally and made her Wimbledon debut. In 1956, she became the first African-American athlete to win a Grand Slam tournament at the French Championships singles event. She also won the doubles title with Briton Angela Buxton. Until her retirement in 1958, Gibson won 56 national and international singles and doubles titles, including 11 majors, and was the first black player to win the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Nationals. Gibson had accomplished all that while struggling financially and suffering from racism in many places she competed. After retiring, she played professional golf for a while, becoming the first Black player to compete on the Women’s Professional Golf Tour and join the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Among those involved in the campaign to place Gibson’s statue were the legendary tennis player Billie Jean King and former president and CEO of the Us Tennis Association, Katrina Adams. The sculptor Eric Goulder created it, depicting Gibson’s bust on five granite blocks. Her quote is inscribed on one of the blocks: “I hope that I have accomplished just one thing: that I have been a credit to tennis and my country.” An augmented reality experience, narrated by Billie Jean King, provides the visitors with information about the life story and accomplishments of Gibson. Another statue of Gibson stands in New Jersey. Read more...

Elizabeth Blackwell is immortalized as a student in a statue on the Hobart Quadrangle, the center of Hobart and William Smith Colleges (successor of the Geneva Medical College) campus. Blackwell (1821-1910) was rejected from 16 medical schools due to her gender before getting accepted to Geneva Medical College in 1847. She graduated two years later, at the top of her class, and became the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Her achievement is considered one of the proudest moments in the history of Hobart and William Smith. Blackwell co-founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1957 and later the Woman’s Medical College in New York City. She lectured female audiences on sexual physiology, hygiene, and reproduction. Upon returning to England, she operated a private practice and helped found the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874. The seven-foot bronze, 800-pound sculpture, was dedicated on October 1st, 1994; it is the only figure sculpture on campus. Using three models, Blackwell’s photographs, diaries, biographical records, and ancient casting techniques, the college Professor of Art and Architecture A.E. Ted Aub sculpted it for three years, and Dexter Benedict cast it. Benedict also created the statues of Harriet Tubman and James Seward in Schenectady. On the granite base, an excerpt from a letter Blackwell wrote from Geneva in 1847 reads: “I cannot but congratulate myself on having found at last the right place for my beginning.” A plaque in front of the monument reads: “ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D. / 1821-1910 / Admitted to the Medical School of Geneva (now Hobart) / College in 1847 and graduated, first in her class, two / years later, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female/physician in the United States. Her life was devoted / to women’s and children’s health care, reproductive / education, and to open the medical profession to women”. The campus is a short drive from Seneca Falls, a small town known as the Birthplace of Women’s Rights Movement. It has lots of interesting places to visit. Click here for a full itinerary. Read more...

Marcella Sembrich Opera Museum, also known as The Sembrich, is a music venue and museum that preserve the legacy and love of the music of the internationally renowned Polish opera singer Marcella Sembrich. Sembrich (1858-1935) was born in Poland and started her music career at a young age, playing the piano and violin in local events to support her family. Sembrich furthered her music education at the Lemberg Conservatory, studying piano and violin and developing her vocal capabilities. Then, deciding to focus on voice, she studied with the best teachers in Vienna and Milan. Sembrich made her opera debut at 19 in Athens, which led to a successful career that included performing on the biggest stages in Europe and the United States. She sang in English, Polish, German, French, and Italian, gave recitals, and taught vocal programs. In 1898, Sembrich performed at the Met Opera in New York City, stayed for 11 seasons, and spent most of her time in the US. The outbreak of World War I prevented her from spending the summer in the European Alps, so she set the Adirondack Mountains area in New York as her new summer destination. Sembrich stayed at Lake Placid during the summers of 1915-1921 and then at the home and teaching studio she built at Lake George. During these summers, her students joined her to study and rest. Shortly after she died, her house was opened in 1937 as a history museum (free admission), showcasing personal items, memorabilia, and mementos from her life. In addition to commemorating Sembrich, the building hosts music events and festivals, continuing to spread her love of music. Read more...

On the intersection of Broadway and West 46th Street stands one of the last landmarks of the historic Times Square, the I. Miller Building. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Israel Miller operated a shoe store, designing shoes for the greatest actresses of the time. His famous slogan hung outside “The Show Folks Shoe Shop—Dedicated to Beauty in Footwear.” In 1929, he decided to erect marble statues in the four niches on the building’s 2nd story and commissioned Alexander Stirling Calder for the work. The public chose an actress from the fields of drama, comedy, opera, and screen, and they are (from west to east): Ethel Barrymore as Ophelia in Hamlet; Marilyn Miller as Sunny in the 1925 hit musical of the same name; Mary Pickford as Little Lord Fauntleroy; and Rosa Ponselle, in her most famous role, as Norma in Bellini’s opera. These statues have been standing till these days after reconstructive surgery in 2012. They are among the several outdoor statues honoring real women in the heart of New York City. Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) became known as “The First Lady of the American Theatre.” She was a stage, radio, and film actress for six decades. This statue depicts her in 1925 in the role of Ophelia in Hamlet she played on Broadway. A few blocks away, on 241 West 47th Street in the Theater District, stands the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, which has been operating as a Broadway theatre since 1928. Marilyn Miller (1898-1936) was a well-known Broadway musical star of the 1920s and early 1930s. She performed on stage since she was five and made her Broadway debut at sixteen. Her statue depicts her as Sunny, the circus queen from the 1925 musical Sunny. She passed away at the young age of 37 from complications following surgery. Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress, producer, and businesswoman who co-founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios, United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In her statue, she is depicted in her role in the 1921 film Little Lord Fauntleroy. Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) was considered one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century. She was born to Italian immigrant parents in Connecticut and started singing from a young age in local venues. She made her Broadway debut at 18 and three years later at the Metropolitan Opera, where she continued singing till her unofficial retirement in 1937. Her statue portrays her as Norma, the role she performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1927. Read more...

The Anne Frank Memorial Garden at Arboretum Park commemorates Anne Frank, a Jewish Holocaust victim and the victims of the Holocaust. Anne Frank (1929-1945) was only four when she and her Jewish family moved from their hometown of Frankfurt, Germany, to Amsterdam in the Netherlands following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Seven years later, the Germans invaded the Netherlands and applied antisemitic laws on Jewish citizens. The following year, after various attempts to escape, the Frank family had no choice but to go into hiding in the company building of her father. Anne, her sister Margot, and her parents crammed together with four more people at a 450 square feet annex. During this time, Anne documented her daily life in a diary she got for her 13th birthday. On August 4th, 1944, the secret German police found them. All of the annex’s residents were sent to Auschwitz, the last place Anne saw her parents. Later, she and her sister were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where both died of typhus only a few weeks before the war ended. Anne was 15 and Margot 18. When the war ended, her father, the only survivor of the family, got her diary from his former secretaries, who found it after the police raid on the annex. He published it in 1947 with the title The Diary of a Young Girl. The book and Anne became worldwide famous. The idea for an Anne Frank memorial was initiated in 2004 by Councilwoman Marlene Budd. It took four years before Steven Dubner Landscaping was chosen to bring it to life. Drawings made by elementary school students are integrated into their designs. The garden, dedicated on June 13th, 2010, incorporates symbolic elements from Anne Frank’s life, including a cement infused with glass that memorializes Kristallnacht. The night in November 1938, synagogues and Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria were vandalized following the Third Reich regime order. A circular pathway surrounds the garden and leads to a statue created by Thea Lanzisero. The sculpture is in the shape of a little girl’s dress, made of white laced steel, representing vulnerability and fearlessness and inspired by designs from Anne Frank’s time. While the steel is stiff and protective, the lace pattern is soft and sensitive, much like Anne Frank herself. Click here to read about more statues honoring Anne Frank in the world. Read more...

On the Highland side of the Walkway over the Hudson, only eight miles from where she was born, stands a statue of the renowned speaker, abolitionist, and suffragist Sojourner Truth (c.1797-1883). Born as Isabella Baumfree into slavery, she was sold three times throughout her life. At the age of 29, after her master refused to grant her the freedom he promised her, she escaped with her infant daughter, leaving her four older children behind. Two years later, a year after the New York State Emancipation Act passed, she sued her previous owner for selling one of her children and became the first black woman to sue a white man in a US court and win. At 46, she heard a calling from the spirit of God to become a preacher of the truth, and she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She embarked on a lecturing tour throughout the state, speaking of abolition and universal suffrage, becoming one of the leading activists for racial and gender equality and a role model for the future civil rights and women’s equality movements. The 7-foot-tall bronze statue was dedicated on August 25th, 2020, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. It depicts Sojourner Truth standing tall, reaching her right hand to the people while holding her cane in her left hand. The engravings on her skirt represent events from her life, such as an image of an enslaved mother comforting her child, a slavery sale sign, and a poster for a women’s suffrage march. On the bottom of the skirt is an inscription of one of her most famous quotes: “The Truth is Powerful, and It Prevails.” After visiting the statue, take a walk on the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, and cross the bridge to enjoy the beautiful landscape of the Hudson River. According to its creator, the artist Vinnie Bagwell, the statue intends to inform the viewers about Truth’s life and encourage critical thinking. It is the second public statue of the Vinnie Bagwell; the first statue she created stands across the Hudson River in Yonkers, NY; it honors the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. Read more...

Mary Jemison (1743-1833) was born during her parents’ voyage from Ireland to the New World. On their arrival, the Jemison family joined other Scotch-Irish immigrants and settled in Marsh Creek, Pennsylvania. During the French and Indian War in 1758, 15 years old Jemison and her family were captured by a raiding party of Shawnee warriors and French soldiers. They were murdered, and she was sold to the Seneca Indians, who adopted her and named her Dehgewanus – Two Falling Voices. She married a Delaware man, and together with their infant son Thomas, they embarked on a 700-mile walk along the Genesee River to the Sehgahunda Valley. Her husband died on the journey, and the young widow remarried a Seneca man named Hiakatoo, bringing six children with him. During the Revolutionary War, the Senecas allied with the British. The Senecas were forced to cede their lands after the war; thanks to Jemison’s help with the negotiation, her tribe received favorable terms to the Treaty of Big Tree. Jemison, who became known as the White Woman of the Genesee, remained on her 2-acre parcel for a few more years, and in 1831, at the age of 88, she sold her part and moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation, where she died two years later. Forty years later, the Senecas’ burial ground at Buffalo Creek was destroyed. The owner of the land, William P. Letchworth, accepted the request of Jemison’s grandchildren and brought her remains back home to the banks of the Genesee. In March 1874, her grave was relocated to the grounds of what would become Letchworth State Park and marked by a granite monument. In 1910, the granite became the base of a seven-foot-high bronze statue of her. Created by Henry K. Bush-Brown, it depicts young Jemison, wearing her traditional Seneca clothes, carrying her child Thomas on her back from Ohio to the Genesee Valley. Next to the statue stands the original cabin Jemison built for her daughter Nancy in 1800. The original stone of her grave from Buffalo Creek is preserved in the park’s museum. Another statue of Jemison had been standing near her home in Adams County, Pennsylvania, since 1921. Read more...

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) was an American author, best known for her Little House on the Prairie books series. She was born to a family of settlers that often moved across America’s heartland until they settled in De Smet, South Dakota. Only then, 12 years old Ingalls had begun her formal education, and just before her 16th birthday, while still in high school, she began to work as a teacher in one-room schools. At 18, she married Almanzo Wilder, settled in a new home north of De Smet, and worked together on their farm. Over time, she became an expert on rural living and poultry farming and received invitations to lecture on these topics. At 44, after publishing an article in the Missouri Ruralist, she was offered a position as an editor and a columnist; she wrote about current topics and her thoughts about the increasing opportunities women had during that time. Following the economic crisis of 1929, along with the personal loss of her mother and sister, Ingalls started to write her childhood memories. In 1932, at the age of 65, she published the book Little House in the Big Woods, which became the first of the eight Little House on the Prairie series. The second book in the series, Farmer Boy, published in 1933, follows her husband’s childhood in the Wilder Homestead in Malone, NY. On June 5th, 1987, the Almanzo & Laura Ingalls Wilder Association (ALIWA) was incorporated to preserve the original childhood home as a historic site that includes a museum, an educational center, three barns, a working 19th-century farm, and a picnic pavilion on 84 acres of farmland. The museum exhibits a collection of period artifacts and farming tools and provides information about Ingalls, the Wilder family, and 19th-century farming life. The Wilder Homestead hosts various events during the summer, including the Celebration of Youth & Morgan Horse Event, the Scottish Fling festival, and the Harvest Fest & Civil War Living History. Read more...

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) was a physician, abolitionist, women’s rights and dress reform advocate, and the first and only woman to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor. Mary Walker was born and raised by progressive parents in Oswego, NY. At 23, she earned her medical degree, the second woman to graduate from Syracuse Medical College. During the Civil War, she volunteered as a civilian at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, DC, and established a Women’s Relief Organization that helped the families of wounded soldiers. Later, she treated soldiers near the front lines of Virginia, and in 1863, at 31, she was hired by the Army of the Cumberland and became the first female surgeon to serve in the Union army. The following year, she was appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry, often crossing the battle lines to treat civilians. For her work during the war, Walker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor – the first and only woman ever to receive it. In 1917, the medal was revoked but restored after her death. Since she was young, she preferred wearing men’s clothes rather than the restricting and uncomfortable women’s attire. She only wore a skirt at her wedding. Walker was a loud advocate for various social causes, and after the war, she traveled through the US giving lectures on abolition, temperance, women’s suffrage, and especially women’s dress reform. She died a year before the 19th Amendment was ratified to the US Constitution, granting women voting rights. The Mary Edwards Walker statue stands at the entrance of the Oswego Town Hall since its dedication on May 12, 2012. The initial idea for the statue came from its sculptor, Sharon BuMann, that learned about Walker while growing up in Oswego. A few years later, the community pushed for its creation, and private people donated money for its commission. The result is a 900-pound, six-foot-tall bronze statue of Walker, wearing her signature outfit of trousers beneath a mid-length skirt, her medical bag laying beneath her, and her hand gesturing toward her Medal of Honor on her lapel. She is about to give a speech, approaching a podium inscribed with the medical symbol, her biography, and one of her famous quotes. A quill and a copy of her book Hit: Essays on Women’s Rights lay on the podium. Inside the Town Hall, there is an exhibit about her life and many achievements. Read more...

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. Read more...