Willa Cather statue to be unveiled at U.S. Capitol this week

Sep 15, 2023

Take a look at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie.

The bronze sculpture of Willa Cather shows her holding a walking stick in one hand and paper with her writing in another.

Willa Cather, shown in a 1921 photograph taken by George Marsdsen, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours."

Cather is taking a step through Nebraska's prairie, her gaze straight ahead under a wide-brimmed hat.

This sculpture of the author will be unveiled Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall. The ceremony will be broadcast live on C-Span and on the website of the speaker of the House.

The public is also invited to viewing parties at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln and at the National Willa Cather Center's Opera House in Red Cloud. The events are free and open to everyone.

Each state has two statues at the U.S. Capitol as part of the Statuary Hall collection, although overcrowding has resulted in many of the statues being placed in various other spots around the Capitol complex. Back in 1937, Nebraska opted for statues of Julius Sterling Morton and William Jennings Bryan.

Then in 2018, the Nebraska Legislature voted to replace Morton with a statue of Cather and to swap Bryan for Standing Bear, the Ponca chief whose stirring appearance in federal court led to legal recognition of Indians as human beings.

The statue of Standing Bear is already in the U.S. Capitol after being unveiled in 2019. Getting Cather's statue to D.C. took longer than initially expected because of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

But the timing of the installation ceremony comes at a meaningful time for Cather. It's exactly six months before her 150th birthday on Dec. 7 and 100 years after she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "One of Ours."

Cather, who also authored "My Ántonia" and "O Pioneers," spent her formative years in Red Cloud and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895.

Sculptor Littleton Alston with a clay miniature of the Willa Cather statue. Alston, a professor of sculpture at Creighton University, beat out more than 70 other artists to create the Cather statue.

Littleton Alston, a professor of sculpture at Creighton University, beat out more than 70 other artists to create the Cather statue. He will be the first African American to have a sculpture in the Statuary Hall Collection, according to a press release.

Like Cather, Alston was born in Virginia but came west to Nebraska. Alston said in an interview he considers himself a Nebraskan now after living in the state for more than 30 years.

"Being the first African American sculptor in that Statuary Hall collection is a huge honor especially since I grew up in poverty in Washington D.C.," Alston said. "To have a work placed there is a true honor…and rounding out this perfect circle that my life has worked towards."

To create the Cather statue, Alston read her writings, notes and letters. He also visited the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud and looked at the author's possessions that are in the museum collection.

In Alston's sculpture, Cather is wearing a jacket that was a gift from her publisher and a gold snake ring that she wore often throughout her life. Behind Cather, a wagon wheel is partially buried in the soil.

"I used the wagon wheel as a symbol of moving through the land, understanding the land but then also being deeply rooted in the land, partially buried in land," Alston said.

Ashley Olson, executive director of the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, said Alston took the time to introduce elements into the sculpture and it make it personal in a way other depictions of Cather have not.

Olson said Cather's writing spans settings that include the desert Southwest, 17th-century Quebec and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, but her most well-known stories are about Nebraska and its people.

"Her books really spotlight human stories with themes that are present in our lives today," Olson said. "Things we’re still dealing with like love and loss, frustration and determination, tragedy and discovery."

Cather also created a sense of place in her work in the way she wrote about the Nebraska landscape, Olson said.

"When she writes about the Nebraska landscape, it's in a way that I think we as Nebraskans can really appreciate this wonderful place we get to call home," Olson said. "But she's also done us a real service by making people outside of the state of Nebraska know and understand the state in a way they wouldn't have without her literature."

Olson encouraged people who are interested in learning more about Cather to visit the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, which opened in 2017. There's a public museum, archive, research center, bookstore, art gallery and the Red Cloud Opera House. Five miles south of Red Cloud is the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, which is 612 acres of native prairie being returned to its 19th century conditions.

There also will be events throughout the year to celebrate Cather's 150th birthday. For more information, visit willacather.org.

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[email protected], 402-444-1192, twitter.com/emily_nitcher

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Emily is an enterprise reporter for the World-Herald. Previously, Emily covered K-12 education, local government and the Nebraska Legislature. Follow her on Twitter @emily_nitcher. Phone: 402-444-1192.

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