Twenty Years After Suffragists Statue Victory, The Quest Continues For A National Women's History Museum
Of all the excuses given for why a statue of three suffragettes could not be moved into the Capitol Rotunda, Joan Wages thought the most disheartening was the observation that the women, as depicted, were rather unattractive.
Wages and a group of women had been pushing members of Congress to move the statue, formally called the Portrait Monument. It had been donated to the country by the National Women's Party in February 1921, a year after the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, and placed in the Crypt, on the bottom floor of the Capitol Building. Each movement forward was halted by another objection: The Rotunda could not support the 13-ton statue. It would be wrong to spend taxpayers' money to move it. But sniping by some members of Congress, including a few female lawmakers, about how the women looked, as opposed to what they had accomplished, seemed way out of line. . .