Commission seeks artist proposals for Edison statue
Today the Ohio Statuary Hall Commission (OSHC) issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to artists as they begin the process of commissioning a statue of Thomas Edison to be added to Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. The OSHC is seeking qualified artists to submit proposals for the statue and will eventually select five finalists before the final proposal is chosen. The deadline for artists to submit a proposal is 4 p.m. on May 5, 2014.
As the U.S. Capitol expanded and the House of Representatives vacated its chamber for a larger one in 1857, Congress passed a law in 1864 that set aside the vacant chamber for statues of individuals from each state of particular historic significance and recognized achievement. Each state is permitted statues of bronze or marble representing no more than two individuals. Thomas Edison would join James Garfield as Ohio’s representatives in Statuary Hall and will replace the statue of Governor William Allen, which the General Assembly and Governor John Kasich decided to recall in 2012.
Thomas Edison, a native of Milan, Ohio, just south of Lake Erie, is rightly regarded as one of the most famous inventors in history. Over the course of his life he received more than one thousand patents, including patents for the phonograph, kinetoscope (a precursor to the film projector) and the first practical incandescent light bulb.
The RFQ is seeking proposals from artists that will include how the artist intends to convey Edison through their design, documentation and photos of prior experience and an itemized estimate of expenses. Artists are also asked to identify the foundry, if bronze is proposed, or the method of procuring marble along with the type, color and geographic area from where the marbled is mined. Preferential consideration is given to those artists from Ohio and that use an Ohio foundry.
The OSHC will select up to five finalists who will then be asked to submit a small model of their proposed design. Once the commission has made its final selection, that artist’s proposal must be approved by the State of Ohio, the Architect of the Capitol and the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress. The entire project is funded solely by private donations and the final statue is tentatively scheduled to be unveiled on October 21, 2015 in the U.S. Capitol.
The deadline for responses to RFQ is 4 p.m. May 5, 2014. Finalists will be selected by May 26 and will have just over a month to complete their models before the June 30 deadline to submit them to the OSHC. The final proposal will be selected on July 14, 2014, subject to approval by the Architect of the Capitol and the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress. For more information and to download the RFQ visit http://www.ohiostatuaryhall.org/
