Where Are All the Women?: Advocacy, Politics and the National Statuary Hall

In 1864, Congress designated the nation’s first statue collection, the National Statuary Hall. The collection, displayed in the United States Capitol, presents two statues from each state in the union, honoring notable native sons and daughters from across the country. The states, however, have favored their sons; until very recently, Statuary Hall comprised ninety-three men and only seven women. In 2000, Congress began allowing states to swap previously donated statues for newly commissioned ones, in an attempt at modernizing the collection. Very few took advantage of the legislation until 2017, when the social and political upheavals of the Charlottesville protests and the #MeToo movement began a national dialogue about women’s empowerment and equal representation. Countless news stories, public protests and social media virality put immense pressure on state legislatures to respond. Since 2017, five states (Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah) have voted to replace statues of white men with figures of women (respectively, Daisy Gatson Bates, Mary McLeod Bethune, Amelia Earhart, Willa Cather, and Martha Hughes Cannon). The art world at large has paid very little attention to the expanding collection, perhaps owing the collection’s perceived retrogressive forms of bronze statues on pedestals. This paper charts the path that these new statues took toward the Capitol, through newspaper accounts, federal proceedings, and commissioning documents, profiling the many patrons who fought unceasingly on their behalf. What emerges is a blueprint for how cultural advocacy can shape a national collection, even in a venue as aesthetically conservative as National Statuary Hall.