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# NYC Is Looking for Artists to Honor Four Influential Women
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/nyc-is-looking-for-artists-to-honor-four-influential-women/
- Published: 2024-04-01T21:07:10.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:20:23.000Z
- Description: Helen Rodríguez Trías, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Billie Holiday, and Katherine Walker will get their own monuments in the city.
- Author: Maya Pontone
- Tags: News, New York, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/04/women.jpg)

Left to right: Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Helen Rodríguez Trías, Billie Holiday, and Katherine Walker (all photos via Wikimedia, collage by Maya Pontone/*Hyperallergic*)

New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) is looking for artists to design four monuments honoring influential women in the city’s history. Initially announced in March 2019, projects to build monuments dedicated to Helen Rodríguez Trías, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Billie Holiday, and Katherine Walker are finally resuming progress after being stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, artists have until the end of the year to [submit their proposals](https://nyculture.submittable.com/submit?utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fname=&utm%5Fsource=govdelivery) for these historical tributes, contending with the city’s longtime [underrepresentation of historical women](https://hyperallergic.com/226186/the-only-five-public-statues-of-historic-women-in-nyc/) in its public art program. Currently, only eight of the nearly 150 public monuments of notable figures across the city portray women. The delayed projects are spearheaded by [She Built NYC](https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcla/publicart/shebuiltnyc.page?ref=hyperallergic.com) — an initiative first launched in 2018 in order to address gender inequality in New York's monuments and sculptures.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/04/shirley-chisholm.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/04/rendering-courtesy-the-artists.jpg)

Left: Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for presidential nomination in Washington, DC, in 1972 (photo by T.J. O'Halloran, courtesy NYC Department of Cultural Affairs); right: A rendering of the forthcoming Shirley Chisholm monument at the southeast entrance of Brooklyn's Prospect Park (image by Olalekan B. Jeyifous and Amanda Williams, courtesy NYC Department of Cultural Affairs)

The new artworks will be installed in four out of the five boroughs. At Lincoln Medical Center in downtown Bronx, a tribute to Helen Rodríguez Trías, the first Latinx president of the American Public Health Association, will recognize her advocacy work in reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS care and prevention. In Manhattan, a memorial will honor the legacy of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a schoolteacher who challenged racial segregation in 1854 when she boarded a streetcar that refused to accept Black passengers and ultimately helped end transit segregation in the city. An homage to Eleanora Fagan Gough, better known as Billie Holiday, will spotlight the celebrated jazz singer in her former Queens neighborhood at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center, a venue located near many of the clubs at which she used to perform. And on Staten Island’s North Shore, a monument in memory of former lighthouse keeper Katherine Walker will celebrate her 35-year-long career during which she was credited with saving at least 50 lives.

Last summer, the New York City Public Design Commission unanimously approved Amanda Williams’s and Olalekan B. Jeyifous's design for a monument of former United States Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and to run for the presidential nomination in a major party.

Anticipated to be completed by 2027, this monument will be situated at the southeast entrance to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park alongside a new welcome center.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2024/04/pioneers.jpg)

Unveiled in 2020, Meredith Bergmann's sculpture in Central Park honors three pioneers of women’s rights: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth. (photo Hakim Bishara/*Hyperallergic*)

While the relaunch of She Built NYC’s projects is an important opportunity to commemorate New Yorkers whose work has previously been unacknowledged, it follows a rocky recent history in the city’s efforts to diversify its public art.

In August 2020, a 14-foot-tall bronze statue of women's rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth was [unveiled](https://hyperallergic.com/584676/monument-to-susan-b-anthony-elizabeth-cady-stanton-and-sojourner-truth-unveiled-in-central-park/) in Central Park, becoming the [first sculpture](https://hyperallergic.com/222631/a-project-calls-for-statues-of-women-in-central-park/) in the park’s 167-year-history to feature historical women (unlike the various statuary tributes to fictional characters, like Alice in Wonderland and Mother Goose). However, the final result took [more than a year of deliberations](https://hyperallergic.com/517626/vote-on-central-parks-contested-suffragist-monument-is-postponed/) and an [entire redesign of the original proposal](https://hyperallergic.com/517626/vote-on-central-parks-contested-suffragist-monument-is-postponed/) due to its exclusion of [suffragists of color](https://hyperallergic.com/490554/a-monument-to-womens-suffrage-receives-unanimous-approval-despite-controversy/).

Delays have also been an issue in projects announced by She Built NYC, such as the forthcoming monument honoring LGTBQ+ activists Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson first announced in 2019\. Postponed to a later date yet to be announced, activists took the matter into their own hands on the trans activist’s birthday in 2021 by [installing a guerilla bust of Johnson](https://hyperallergic.com/672833/on-the-day-of-marsha-johnsons-birthday-guerrilla-memorial-pops-up-by-stonewall/) near the Stonewall Inn.