New Bedford Herman Melville Statue Finalists Selected
NEW BEDFORD (WBSM) — As the City of New Bedford moves forward with its plan to erect a statue in honor of author Herman Melville, more than 40 artists expressed interest in designing the statue.
Now, four finalists have been selected, and will submit their final design ideas.
The finalists were chosen by an advisory committee comprised of local historians and representatives from New Bedford’s arts and culture community, the City of New Bedford said in a release.
They are tasked with selecting an artist and a design for honoring Melville with a statue outside of Seamen's Bethel, which was featured in Melville’s great novel Moby-Dick.
“I’ve always thought that New Bedford should own him,” Mayor Jon Mitchell said in his weekly appearance on WBSM Wednesday. “He wrote the preeminent novel of the English language and set it right here in New Bedford, and we are very proud of it.”
“We have a boulevard named for him, but I think we should take it a step further,” Mitchell said. “We don’t have a lot of statues in the city. We have some, not many, but we should have a statue in New Bedford for him that you go to see when you come to New Bedford, and that can be a source of pride for New Bedford residents.”
The Four Finalists to Create New Bedford’s Herman Melville Statue
You can click on each artist’s name to see their website and further examples of their work.
Meredith Bergmann
Her previous work includes the FDR Hope Memorial on Roosevelt Island in New York City, the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, and the Boston Women’s Memorial on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Her work has been shown in more than two dozen exhibitions and appears in more than a dozen institutional collections.
Jay Hall Carpenter
His previous work includes the Virginia Patriots in Leesburg, Virginia, the Jim Henson Memorial at the University of Maryland, and the Frederick Douglass Memorial in Easton, Maryland. The former sculptor for the Washington National Cathedral for 20 years, Carpenter’s work is exhibited in public spaces and premier fine art galleries in the United States and England.
Susan Luery
Her previous work includes St. Joseph the Worker in Hanson, Mass., Lefty Grove in Lonaconing, Maryland, and the 16-foot sculpture honoring Babe Ruth that stands in front of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Her Promethean Radiation piece was presented to Prince Charles and Princess Diana on the occasion of their wedding in 1981. Her sculptures can be found in private, public and museum collections throughout the world.
Stefanie Rocknak
Her previous work includes a model of the Venus of Lespugue for artist Robert Morris which was enlarged and permanently installed in The Gori Collection in Fattoria de Celle, Pistoia, Italy. She was also selected from a pool of 265 artists to create the statue of Edgar Allan Poe in Poe Square in Boston. Venues for her work have included The Smithsonian, the Grolier Club in New York, the Tampa Museum of Art, and the windows of Saks 5th Ave in New York.
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