By Karen Matthews
NEW YORK (AP) --The 4-foot bronze Fearless Girl statue that was deposited in front of New York City's Charging Bull in 2017 will remain in its current spot opposite the New York Stock Exchange at least until early next year while city officials wrestle with a permanent disposition for the popular symbol of female empowerment, a city board decided Monday.
Members of the Public Design Commission granted an 11-month permit extension and said they would spend the next six months exploring a way for New York City to take ownership of the statue, which is currently the subject of litigation between artist Kristen Visbal and State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based asset-management firm that commissioned it.
"We today, the Public Design Commission, cannot make this a permanent piece of art," commission president Signe Nielsen said. "We can urge that steps be taken to enable this work to be considered for the public collection."
The statue of a spunky young girl was supposed to be a temporary installation when State Street commissioned it in 2017–as part of a campaign from agency McCann New York–to urge higher representation of women on corporate boards, but permits to keep it on display were extended several times once it became a major tourist attraction.
Fearless Girl was moved to its current location opposite the Stock Exchange in December 2018 and has continued to draw selfie-taking visitors there.
Visbal, meanwhile, began selling replicas of the statue around the world. State Street, which had an ownership contract with the artist, sued Visbal alleging the replica sales violated the agreement, and Visbal countersued, arguing that the company was infringing on her rights.
"The commission should be aware that State Street has sued me, which makes it impossible for them to act as fair agents on my behalf," Visbal told design commission members over Zoom.
She urged the city to take ownership of the piece itself. "I am convinced the only way artists' rights can be honored and acknowledged is if the city owns the work," she said.
Both Visbal and State Street indicated support for the board's vote to renew the statue's temporary permit while working toward a permanent solution.
"As the Artist and the creator of the 'Fearless Girl' statue, I am beyond grateful to New York City and the Public Design Commission for hearing my concerns," Visbal said in a statement. "I pledge to work with the City to identify a fair and reasonable solution in the coming six months."
A State Street spokesperson said in a statement: "We are appreciative the Fearless Girl statue will remain at her current location in front of the New York Stock Exchange. With the outcome of today's hearing with the City of New York's Public Design Commission, we will work together with the Department of Transportation, PDC and the artist regarding our desire to keep the Fearless Girl statue at her current location for an extended period."
More than 67 million people watched Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debate. That’s way up from June
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday's count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump's and Hillary Clinton's first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there's been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday's debate stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said,... Read More