Susan Wilson Photography • gallery

sections: ChrisCole-Kahootz | Hsin-Yun Huang | Anita Diamant | Rebecca Strauss | Pete Seeger | Nancy Dimock & Joel Zavala | Triple Helix | cow dog Christmas | Max the Chef | Holly Near & Cris Williamson | Boston Women's Memorial | Rebecca Parris & Santa | Rebecca Strauss...Got Music | April James | Borromeo String Quartet | Hollywood Murphy | Revolutionary Characters | Bill Morrissey | Lorraine & Bennett Hammond |

Boston Women's Memorial

Though statues of famous deceased men have lined Boston's Commonwealth Avenue Mall since 1865, it wasn't until October, 2003, that women joined this pantheon of much-heralded heroes. Beginning back in 1993, representatives from Boston City Hall, the Boston Women's Commission, the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, the Boston Women's Heritage Trail, and other interested parties started to meet, process, plan, fundraise, and consciousness-raise for a women's memorial to grace the beautiful promenade stretching through Boston's Back Bay.

What took so long? Given all those centuries spent ignoring female accomplishments, one problem was how to choose just one woman from the many worthy movers and shakers possible. The solution: a memorial featuring no less than three Boston writers who had progressive ideas and a commitment to social change -- slave-poet Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), feminist editor Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and revolutionary-era scribe, Abigail Adams (1744-1818). Like the women depicted, sculptor Meredith Gang Bergmann broke from eighteenth and nineteenth century tradition by making the memorial engaging and interactive, and placing the women in and around -- rather than on -- their respective pedestals.