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Artist
Joy Buba, 1904 - 1998
Sitter
Margaret Higgins Sanger, 14 Sep 1879 - 6 Sep 1966
Date
1972 cast after 1964 original
Type
Sculpture
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
With Base: 52.1 x 39.4 x 28.6cm (20 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 11 1/4")
Base: 7.6 x 27.9 x 16.5cm (3 x 11 x 6 1/2")
Topic
Margaret Higgins Sanger: Female
Margaret Higgins Sanger: Communications\Publisher\Magazine
Margaret Higgins Sanger: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Social Reformer
Margaret Higgins Sanger: Health and Medicine\Nurse
Margaret Higgins Sanger: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Birth control advocate
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Cordelia Scaife May
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Object number
NPG.72.70
Exhibition Label
Born Corning, New York
As a visiting nurse among New York City's immigrants in the early 1900s, Margaret Sanger was profoundly affected by the physical and mental toll exacted on women by frequent childbirth, miscarriage, and self-induced abortion. Faced with laws forbidding dissemination of contraceptive information, Sanger's crusade had much opposition. But by 1921, when Sanger founded the Birth Control League, her movement had begun to win adherents in respectable quarters. Adding to her life of controversy is her association with the eugenics movement-which included promotion of forced sterilization for those deemed mentally unfit-a movement that for a time was endorsed by many of the era's prominent thinkers.
