City’s cultural arts office postpones community meeting to view artists’ renderings for a Harriet Tubman statue

A public meeting for Philadelphia residents to view the proposed designs for a Harriet Tubman statue from five artists has been postponed.

The city’s Office of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy announced that the meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday will be rescheduled. In addition, it said the artists’ deadline to submit the designs has been extended from June 9 until July 13.

No reason was given for the deadline extension.

“The public presentation meeting will be rescheduled soon thereafter. We apologize for the inconvenience and disappointment to those who are eager to see the artists’ design presentations. We look forward to seeing you at the rescheduled public meeting,” a statement on the OACCE’s website said.

“Public participation is an important part of OACCE’s public art commissioning process,“ Marguerite Anglin, OACCE’s public art director, said in a city hall news release.

“The rescheduled meeting will be the first opportunity for the public to see the five semifinalists’ statue designs and hear from the artists about their visions and the Harriet Tubman story they are portraying. The public will also have the opportunity to ask the semifinalists questions during the meeting.”

The process to create a permanent Harriet Tubman statue for thas been fraught with controversy since the city awarded a no-bid commission to artist Wesley Wofford early last year.

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

Wofford had brought a traveling version of his sculpture, Journey to Freedom, to Philadelphia last January as part of the recognition of the 200th birthday of Tubman, who led hundreds of enslaved Black Americans to freedom.

However, several members of the public led a campaign to criticize the no-bid, $500,000 commission to Wofford and demanded that the city create an open-call process in which other artists could compete.

Anglin, at the first artist informational meeting about the new artist-selection process last December, said the goal was to have a statue that would “celebrate Harriet Tubman’s life, legacy, significance to Philadelphia, and contributions to our nation’s history.”

Assisted by the African American Historic Statue Advisory Committee, the city’s arts office selected five artists as semifinalists and announced their names in early April.

Those artists who will be submitting designs are Vinnie Bagwell, Richard Blake, Tanda Francis, Alvin Pettit, and Basil Watson

On April 24, the arts office held its first public meeting where members of the community could meet the five and answer their questions about what they wanted to see in a Tubman statue.

“We said that from the beginning, that it was a very rushed deadline.”

Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza of the Sankofa Artisans Guild is also a spokeswoman for the Celebrating the Legacy of Nana Harriet Tubman Committee, which had opposed the no-bid commission to Wofford and advocated for an open-call process.

She said she was not surprised to learn that the deadline for submitting designs had been extended.

“It was an unreasonable deadline anyway,” she said “We said that from the beginning, that it was a very rushed deadline.”

After the arts office’s “Call for Artists” went out Nov. 30, there was a Jan. 26 deadline to apply. The semifinalists were announced in April and their designs were originally due on June 9.

Sullivan-Ongoza also said OAACE should be more transparent about why the deadline was extended and whether one or more of the artists asked for the extension.

“We should know why,” she said.

Anglin said that additional information about the Harriet Tubman statue is available on OACCE’s website and that once a new meeting date is confirmed, it will be added to the website.