The U.S. Capitol ’s National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington , D.C.,hosts two statuesof key figures from each province that have ethnic or political resonance , fromThomas EdisontoGeorge Washington . This calendar month , the forum will get a new appendage : pioneer Kansan aviatorAmelia Earhart .
The long - design bronze statue , which is ready to beunveiled to the publicfor the first time on July 27 , was fully finance by the Atchison Amelia Earhart Foundation . The organization has been lick to fund and commission the sculpture since 2013 , though exertion to place a statue of Earhart debase farther back : in 1999 , the Kansas state legislature announced programme to replace statue of former regulator George Washington Glick and former senator John James Ingalls withDwight D. Eisenhowerand Earhart , respectively .
Eisenhower was installed in 2003 ; Earhart ’s journeytook considerably longer , as funding and design delays put off the debut . Sculptors George and Mark Lundeen of Loveland , Colorado , make the Earhart carving . Another Earhart statuestands at Purdue University , where she play as a women ’s counselor-at-law and aeronautics adviser .
Earhart ’s abbreviated life has long been the theme of surmise . She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo in an airplane ; later , she and navigator Fred Noonandisappeared over the Pacificin 1937 . Her speculated fate has ranged from being stranded on an island to having her remainsdevoured by coconut Crab .
Of the 100 statue in the collecting , Earhart will be the eleventh woman to be commemorated . lately , Floridaintroduceda statue of educator and civic rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune , who becomes the first Black American to be honor in the Capitol ’s National Statuary Hall . Bethune ’s sculpture replaced Edmund Kirby Smith , a Confederate general .
