Five artists selected as semifinalists to propose and design a new Harriet Tubman statue for the city

After protests and condemnations for awarding a $500,000 no-bid commission for a statue of Harriet Tubman last year, the city of Philadelphia announced that five artists have been selected as semifinalists for the newly reopened public project.

The Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE), also known as Creative Philly, announced on Friday that the African American Historic Statue Advisory Committee chose the five artists based on their previous works.

That work “illustrated their history of creating high-quality monumental statues that are both engaging and impactful,” Marguerite Anglin, public art director of Creative Philly, said in the announcement.

The Harriet Tubman statue will be the first statue of a Black woman in Philadelphia’s public art collection, said Kelly Lee, the city’s chief cultural officer and executive director of Creative Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: City’s plan for $500K Harriet Tubman monument comes under fire for not being open to Black artists

The five artists — Vinnie Bagwell, Richard Blake, Tanda Francis, Alvin Pettit, and Basil Watson — will create and propose original designs for a Tubman statue. The winning design will become a permanent statue that will be placed at the northeast apron of City Hall.

In 2019, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs commissioned Bagwell, an artist based in Yonkers, to create a public work to replace the Central Park statue of J. Marion Sims, the 19th-century gynecologist who experimented on enslaved Black women to achieve his medical breakthroughs.

And last October, a private group selected Francis, who studied at Drexel University, to create a statue of Philadelphia-born opera singer Marian Anderson to go in front of the Academy of Music. No firm date was set for completion, but the goal was to have the sculpture in its Broad Street perch by fall 2023, a consultant told Inquirer reporter Peter Dobrin.

Anderson famously sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Washington‘s Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin.

Four of the five finalists for the Tubman statue — Francis, Bagwell, Blake, and Pettit — were also finalists for the privately commissioned Marian Anderson statue.

In a statement, Mayor Jim Kenney said, “Installing a permanent statue of Harriet Tubman for all Philadelphians to honor and celebrate has been a long time coming.”

It was a rocky road getting to the announcement of these five semifinalists.

Friday’s news came a little over a year after Kenney and Creative Philadelphia announced last March that the city was going to award a $500,000 commission to Wesley Wofford, a North Carolina-based sculptor.

Wofford had brought the traveling version of his Journey to Freedom statue of Tubman to Philadelphia on a temporary basis last year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Tubman’s birth.

His statue was well received by the crowds, and the city offered to purchase the traveling version. However, Wofford said he could not sell that statue because it was a copy of another statue he had already designed for a client in Texas.

Following the announcement that Wofford would be creating a permanent Tubman statue, Creative Philly held a virtual public meeting last June on what Philadelphians wanted to see in the permanent statue.

But Wofford and the city arts officials got pushback from Black residents who said the process was unfair.

The Celebrating the Legacy of Nana Harriet Tubman Committee criticized the city and called for an open-call process that would show what other artists, including Black and female artists, might propose for the permanent statue. Wofford is a white male artist.

» READ MORE: Mayor Kenney, Creative Philly announce they will issue open call for artists for $500K Harriet Tubman statue

“As an artist, it’s hurtful and it is traumatizing,” textile artist Dee Jones said during the meeting. “If it was an open call and Wesley was chosen, it would be fine … But because the process wasn’t open, that’s the big issue.”

After months of petitions, interviews, and widespread news reports by national and international news outlets, as well as letters from City Council members, Creative Philly’s office announced last August that it would have an open-call process after all.

The open call began Nov. 30 and ended Jan. 26, with applications from 50 artists, Creative Philly said.

Sources said that out of those 50, the names of 27 artists, including Wofford’s, were submitted to the advisory committee for selection of the semifinalists.

Via a text Monday, Wofford said, “We are excited about the artists chosen and cannot wait to see the final designs.”

While the semifinalists are Black, sources said that many of the 27 names submitted to the advisory committee were those of white artists.

There will be opportunities for the public to review their suggested designs, city officials said.

Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza, a spokeswoman for the Celebrating the Legacy committee, said the group was very happy with the artists who were chosen.

“Once the process opens up, you can see how many talented people are out there,” Sullivan-Ongoza said. “We have all this hidden talent we didn’t even know about. But so many Black artists don’t get the opportunity because they [the city] handpick people who are already in the system.”

She also said she was pleased that the semifinalists are all figurative artists.

“We don’t want anything abstract and strange like they had with the [Dr. Martin Luther] King statue in Boston with just Harriet’s hand holding a gun.”