Statue of Ginsburg coming to Brooklyn
Bronze figure will unveil on late justice’s birthday
NEW YORK – A bronze statue of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be erected in her hometown of Brooklyn next March on what would be the legal trailblazer’s 88th birthday.
The statue “will commemorate her leadership in the struggle for gender equality and society’s broader march for human rights,” and it will be installed during Women’s History Month next year, the group behind the work said Tuesday in a statement.
It’s part of a larger series called Statues for Equality, which has worked to increase the representation of women in public sculptures around New York City and beyond. The artists who created the statue, Gillie and Marc, worked with Ginsburg and got her approval for the sculpture, they said.
The statue “reflects her wish to be depicted in a dignified manner,” Gillie and Marc said in a statement.
“With the two steps on its large base representing the Supreme Court and the climb she made to get there, the work is designed to provide the public with an opportunity to stand at her side, and gain inspiration from her journey fighting for equal rights,” they added.
The statue is just the latest announcement of plans to honor Ginsburg in Brooklyn.
Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted the day after her death that, “We will immediately begin plans for a Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial. Her memory will live on. I promise you that.”
De Blasio has also announced that the Brooklyn Municipal Building will be renamed after Ginsburg.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has also announced his plans for the state to honor Ginsburg with a statue in Brooklyn. Cuomo said he’d appoint a commission to pick the artist and location.
The Statues for Equality piece is a separate project from the two politicians’ plans.
Born in 1933, Ginsburg grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood and attended high school at nearby James Madison High School. New Yorkers left flowers and candles in makeshift memorials at her childhood home and high school last month after the justice died.
The statue of Ginsburg is set to be installed a few miles away in downtown Brooklyn outside a multi-use development called City Point.
“We are honored to have this great statue grace our property and to bring Justice Ginsburg’s ‘pathmarking’ spirit back to Brooklyn to inspire us for generations,” Chris Conlon, an executive at Acadia Realty, a partner in the City Point development, said in a statement.
The Statues for Equality project started with 10 other statues around New York City to boost women’s representation in public sculptures. Among the notable women depicted in the first 10 works are media icon Oprah Winfrey, Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas, conservationist Jane Goodall, astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson and pop artist P!nk.