City Chooses 'Beyond Sims' Statue Design Amid Community Outcry

EAST HARLEM, NY — The city has selected a design for a new statue to rise on the former site of a controversial monument to J. Marion Sims, following a contentious meeting with East Harlem community leaders that led to an artist withdrawing her work from consideration.

Artist Vinnie Bagwell's design "Victory" is expected to be installed at the Central Park site along Fifth Avenue at East 103rd Street by 2021, the city Department of Cultural Affairs announced this week. Bagwell's statue features an angel made of granite holding a staff resembling the Rod of Asclepius in one hand and an eternal flame in the other.

Other features of Bagwell's preliminary design include an iron gate to be displayed behind the statue and new seating near the monument, according to renderings. The design will also remove the still-standing pedestal that J. Marion Sims once stood on.

"As a creative steward for our nation’s memory, I am so excited about balancing the narrative for enslaved Africans by creating ‘Victory…’ for the City of New York,” Bagwell said in a statement. "Bryce Turner, FAIA, and I appreciate the opportunity to employ our work in a public place as an innovative method of historical preservation, education, and advancement of equity for the City of New York."

The Sims statue was removed in 2018 at the recommendation of a city commission that found the statue "has come to represent a legacy of oppressive and abusive practices." The statue to Sims — who conducted experimental operations without anesthesia on enslaved women — had stood on Fifth Avenue since 1934. East Harlem community leaders had been organizing for nearly a decade to remove the statue before the city created its commission.

The selection of Bagwell's design is the result of a contentious process that culminated in a fiery public meeting where community leaders scolded city officials for disregarding East Harlem's preferences in order to award the site to a big-name artist.

A panel convened by the city Department of Cultural Affairs initially voted Saturday to award the site to artist Simone Leigh in a close 4-3 vote, resulting in outrage from some members of a committee that was working with the city to plan for the future of the site.

The group, called the Committee to Empower Voices for Healing and Equity, accused the city of shutting East Harlem leaders out of the final steps of the process.

"The process of community visioning, community inclusion, community engagement was basically thrown out the window by the city in the last few weeks. And it appears that when they came in, they already had their minds made up," Marina Ortiz of the group East Harlem Preservation, and a member of the committee, told Patch.

Ortiz said that the city revealed its four finalist designs just five days before its vote, and that some designs, Leigh's included, were lacking in detail or unclear. When it came time to vote on Saturday, Bagwell was the only artist to come and present her design to the public.

Despite the fact that Bagwell was the only artist in the room, the city's panel voted to approve Leigh's design. The vote resulted in immediate backlash, with members of the Committee to Empower Voices for Healing and Equity taking panel members to task in the auditorium and eventually getting Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finklepearl to announce that the vote was simply advisory.

Days later, Leigh withdrew her design from consideration.

"I greatly appreciate that my proposal was selected by the committee. However, I am aware that there is significant community sentiment for another proposal," Leigh said in a statement. "Since this is a public monument in their neighborhood, I defer to them and have withdrawn my work."

Ortiz said that she is thankful that Leigh made the decision to withdraw from consideration, but she expects East Harlem leaders will have to stay on top of the city to ensure that the statue that eventually replaces the Sims monument is something approved by the community.

"We taught the city a lesson that they can't do this top down elitist nonsense, and come into communities and preach to us as the quote 'experts," Ortiz said. " They can't talk down to us with their minds already made up and pretend to be engaging us."