Acton sculptor Meredith Bergmann’s Boston Women’s Memorial was honored on Sunday, May 7 at Emmanuel Church in Boston on its 20th anniversary. The Memorial, on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, is an approachable and touchable statuary tribute to Massachusetts leaders Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phyllis Wheatley. Bergmann spoke about the creation of the Memorial, and showed images of its design and sculpting.
The event included world premier compositions by female composers of color, Inés Velasco, Virginia Melika M. Fitzhugh, and Emily Lau, inspired by writings of Adams, Stone, and Wheatley. Excerpts from the writings are inscribed in granite next to the statues at the Memorial. Abigail Adams’ letter to her husband John Adams, the second president of the United States, reads, “Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.” Abolitionist and suffragette Lucy Stone’s words read, “Let women’s sphere be bounded only by her capacity.” Phyllis Wheatley’s book, “Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral”, was the first book published by an African writer in America. Wheatley was born in West Africa and sold into slavery from the ship Phillis in colonial Boston. Her poem, “Imagination! Who can sing thy force?” is quoted on the stone on which she appears to lean as she writes with a feather pen.
The celebration was produced by The Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, Suffrage100MA, and Public Historian Susan Wilson. Wilson introduced the large audience to the scores of statues of male heroes in Boston and told the story of some school children on a field trip who asked, “Where are the women?” Cappella Clausura, a professional ensemble that performs music created by women and often previously unheard, performed the songs written for the event as well as other pieces by women composers, and ended with a singalong to the energetic “March of the Women” by Ethel Smyth, a feminist anthem of women’s suffrage.
After the event at Emmanuel Church, Bergmann walked with a crowd to the Women’s Memorial. She cleaned leaf debris out of small crevices and placed flowers in the statues’ hands. Bergmann moved to Acton two years ago with her husband, Michael, and son, Dan. In her renovated barn studio, she is creating a sculpture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the New York State House, and a bronze gateway with figures of over twenty historic women, for the Town of Lexington, MA.
