Sculptor Alvin Pettit will design the new Harriet Tubman statue in Philadelphia

There is a new “guardian” for Philadelphia. That is how artist Alvin Pettit described the monument of Harriet Tubman the city has selected for City Hall after a year of controversy.

Pettit’s 14-foot bronze statue of Tubman as a Civil War scout and soldier is titled A Higher Power: The Call of a Freedom Fighter and portrays Tubman as a military commander, known for leading 150 Black Union soldiers on the Combahee Ferry Raid in South Carolina.

Tubman is often depicted as someone being pursued. But, Pettit said at Mayor Jim Kenney’s announcement of the design selection on Monday, “I thought it was time to change the narrative.”

”[Tubman] was also a soldier. She is shown in majestic prayer. Perhaps she is calling upon her faith or contemplating a battle,” he said of the sculpture that is slated to be erected on the apron of City Hall.

» READ MORE: Who is Alvin Pettit, the artist chosen for Philly’s Harriet Tubman statue?

Pettit, whose statue of civil rights leader Mary Jane McLeod Bethune stands at Bethune Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Jersey City, added that Tubman will now take her rightful place as “Guardian of Philadelphia in front of a palace-like City Hall.”

Pettit was chosen from a group that originally included five semifinalists announced in April — himself, Vinnie Bagwell, Richard Blake, Tanda Francis, and Basil Watson. The preliminary designs for the monuments were released in August, but one of the artists, Blake, dropped out of the competition after a public survey concluded in September.

The selection of an artist to design the statue of Harriet Tubman has been fraught with controversy for nearly two years.

Philadelphia officials announced in March 2022 that they asked sculptor Wesley Wofford, of North Carolina, to design a permanent statue of Tubman after he had brought a traveling version of a statue he created in 2017, titled Journey to Freedom, to City Hall. In early 2022, the smaller, traveling version of Journey stood outside City Hall to honor the 200th anniversary of Tubman’s birth, and to recognize Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March.

In June 2022, after a group of Philadelphia artists and activists began asking questions, city officials revealed they planned to pay Wofford $500,000 for him to create a statue for Philly. The group wanted to know why the commission was simply “given to him” without an open-call — a process that would have given Black artists an opportunity to be considered. Wofford is white.

The city’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, also known as Creative Philly, wanted the public to help Wofford shape his vision for the Philly statue, so they held a virtual community-engagement meeting that month for residents to share their ideas with the artist.

However, when it came time for members of the public to talk to Wofford directly, the meeting did not go as planned.

Some talked about the inequity of the commission being “just given to him.”

They said that because the statue will be public art, the process should have been opened to other artists to compete for the commission.

“As an artist, it’s hurtful and it is traumatizing,” Dee Jones, a textile artist, told city officials and Wofford during that 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.”

Others said the fact that Black artists were not included in the process was an injustice and unfair.

One activist, Michelle Strongfields, a physician and Black community health organizer, called on Wofford to “resign this commission and allow the process to begin anew.”

At first, Creative Philly officials and Kenney stood by their plans to have Wofford design the statue.

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

But the activists, led by the Celebrating the Legacy of Nana Harriet Tubman Committee, began both a letter-writing campaign and an online petition calling for an open-call process.

After several City Council members weighed in, Wofford withdrew, and Creative Philly said in August 2022 that it would launch an open call for artists.

On Monday, Kelly Lee, the city’s chief cultural officer and the executive director of Creative Philly, acknowledged “it was the public’s advocacy that made us pivot from direct commission and seek open call.”

By April, Creative Philly announced that five semifinalists had been chosen. Members of the public were asked to rank the designs on a public survey on the Creative Philly website that ended in September.

The semifinalists were given an opportunity to revise their initial designs after seeing comments from the survey. But the final decision was made by city officials and the city’s African American Statue Advisory Committee, which included members of Tubman’s family.

Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza, of the Nana Harriet Tubman committee, said she is still disappointed in Creative Philly’s process. She said members of the public were not able to see any revised designs that four of the artists made in response to the survey.

“If this is public art, then the final voting should have come from the public, and not the handpicked [advisory] committee,” Sullivan-Ongoza said.

Kenney referenced the controversy during the announcement itself, saying “I loved [Wofford’s] traveling statue and I was angry when the controversy [arose] about the commission.

“But I am happy we have our own [Tubman statue].”