Monument to Women Memorial Garden is a statuary monument in Nauvoo, Illinois, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The monument is a two-acre garden with twelve statues depicting traditional women's roles. It was constructed in the 1970s to serve as a replacement for the Relief Society monument and designed to promote the woman's values which the LDS Church believed were threatened by the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Dennis Smith and Florence Hansen sculpted the bronze statues and church president Spencer W. Kimball dedicated the monument on June 30, 1978.
Background
1933 Relief Society monument
During the Great Depression, the LDS apostle George Albert Smith and Relief Society president Louise Robison worked to place a monument for the Relief Society in Nauvoo. They received permission from Frederick M. Smith, president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to place the monument on his church's property, the former location of Joseph Smith's Red Brick Store. The monument was dedicated on July 26, 1933. It was moved to the Nauvoo Temple site in 1952, and moved once again to the site of the Monument to Women Memorial Garden in 1988.
Proposed replacement
During the 1970s, the LDS Church opposed the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) because church leaders believed it endangered traditional moral values safeguarding womanhood and the family. In 1973, General Relief Society General President Belle S. Spafford told church president Spencer W. Kimball that the Relief Society monument needed to be replaced. In 1974, Kimball asked Spafford's successor, Barbara B. Smith, if she would be interested in working on a replacement monument. Smith envisioned that this new monument would help defend the traditional women's values that she thought were endangered by the ERA. Smith had the sculptor Florence Hansen make a clay model of a woman in pioneer clothing with a child. Smith was not fully satisfied with this sculpture, so on November 19, 1975, several artists presented their works and ideas to a selection committee composed of leaders in the Priesthood and Relief Society.
The sculptor Dennis Smith proposed that the replacement monument could be a two-acre sculpture garden, spotlighting phases of womenhood in twelve statues. One of the committee members, apostle Mark E. Petersen, suggested that they commission Dennis Smith to create eleven statues for this monument and that they commission Florence Hansen to create the sculpture of the pioneer woman and child. The committee unanimously accepted this idea. Dennis Smith and Hansen signed contracts with the Relief Society and were given priesthood blessings for their upcoming sculpture work on February 4, 1976. The Relief Society announced that the new monument would be a reminder that "the woman in the contemporary world is not far removed from the woman of an earlier era."
Construction
At first, the monument was scheduled to be completed and dedicated on March 17, 1977, the 135th anniversary of the organizational meeting of the Relief Society. However, this deadline would be postponed to gather more funding and allow the sculptors to finish their work. Smith and Hansen worked on their sculptures in the basement studio of Smith's house in Alpine, Utah.
Hansen accepted a request from the LDS Church's leadership to create another statue, one depicting Joseph Smith and his wife Emma Smith. The statues started to take form in the winter of 1978. The sculptors envisioned where they wanted to place the statues and chose scriptural verses which they believed fit best with their works.
At first, the Relief Society struggled to raise enough funds for the monument. Some of the funding came from the Relief Society's wheat fund from the First World War. When Kimball embarked on a tour of Latin America and the Middle East, he encouraged women to contribute to the monument. Dorothy G. Brim collected all funding for the monument. All necessary funding was gathered by March 1978. Barbara B. Smith and Edythe K. Watson then traveled to Nauvoo to select a site for the monument. They selected a two-acre site behind the church's Nauvoo visitors' center. Otis Hamilton was appointed as manager of the volunteers who gardened the site. Durell Nelson designed the park and would act as its caretaker after dedication.