And EVE has been entrusted with the responsibility for making it happen.
I promised a couple of months ago that we had two very big announcements brewing, both of them related to Amelia Earhart. The first was the parade balloon, which is on schedule for a debut this fall.
The second announcement is this: the Governor of Kansas has just signed off on replacing the statue of John James Ingalls in Statuary Hall with a new statue of Amelia Earhart. EVE is named as the party responsible for raising the money and commissioning the statue.
I’ll just quote our press release:
August 23 — It’s official: Kansas will replace its statue of John James Ingalls in the U.S. Capitol with a new sculpture of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.
Ingalls has represented Kansas for more than a century in the National Statuary Hall Collection, which features two statues of illustrious citizens from each state. Amelia Earhart will become only the tenth woman to be honored with a statue in the collection.
Equal Visibility Everywhere (EVE), a national non-profit dedicated to achieving gender parity in the country’s symbols and icons, has been given responsibility for raising the funds for the statue and commissioning the artist.
…continue reading
From the Washington Post tonight:
The District still doesn’t have a vote in Congress, but it is moving closer to gaining some new representatives in the Capitol.
The House Administration Committee is expected to approve a bill Wednesday that would add two statues from the District to the National Statuary Hall Collection, which includes statues of historical luminaries from each state. About a third of the 100 statues are in Statuary Hall, an ornate domed room on the second floor of the Capitol, and the rest are in nearby hallways and the Capitol Visitor Center.
Because the District is not a state, it has been deprived of the chance to put two of its native sons or daughters in the halls of Congress. But Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has led a years-long fight to correct that, and the city picked its two representatives — Pierre L’Enfant, the architect who designed the city, and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass — four years ago.
…continue reading
Sorry, we couldn’t resist. Here’s the press release from the Ohio Historical Society:
Ohioans Choose Edison for National Statuary Hall
(COLUMBUS, OHIO) -On behalf of the National Statuary Collection Study Committee, the Ohio Historical Society announces that inventor Thomas A. Edison was the top vote-getter for Ohio’s representative to National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
From March 20 to June 12, more than 46,000 Ohioans statewide cast ballots for one of 10 nominees for whom they thought should stand for Ohio in Washington, D.C. Of the total, Edison received 14,261 votes, followed by the Wright Brothers with 13,363 votes and Jesse Owens with 4,921 votes, according to Burt Logan, executive director and CEO of the Ohio Historical Society.
“The response to the popular vote was extraordinary,” Logan said. “Ohioans of all ages and from every region of the state took this opportunity to tell state legislators who they want to represent the state in National Statuary Hall and Thomas Edison, world-famous inventor born in Milan, Ohio, is the people’s choice.”
The public vote isn’t binding, but most of the news reports in Ohio seem to be taking it as given that Edison will be the state’s new statue. …continue reading
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