The Fearless Girl Statue Is Being Criticized by the Guy Who Made the Wall Street Bull

Photo by Federica Valabrega

The Fearless Girl statue was a worldwide sensation, and a pretty good PR boost for the Boston-based firm State Street, which used the bronze child as a way to both pressure companies to promote more women to leadership positions and to plug its investments in companies with women on their boards. But now a battle over bronze is brewing in Manhattan.

Arturo Di Modica, the maker of the Charging Bull statue on Wall Street, which the Fearless Girl statue appears to be staring down, is now criticizing the process that led to the artwork being placed right next to his indefinitely. The statue debuted on International Women’s Day and was originally supposed to be in its place only temporarily, but after the city announced last month that it would stay for at least another year.

“We’re all for gender equality,” Norman Siegel, the artist’s lawyer, told The Washington Post last night. “But the questions are because there are other issues.”

They have demanded that the city explain the process by which the statue was allowed to extend its stay at the iconic Wall Street median, and have submitted records requests to that effect.

Speaking with The Guardian, Di Modica said he believed the statue infringed on his rights, and he also critiqued the statue’s status as a symbol for women everywhere. He called it “advertising trick” orchestrated by State Street, the Guardian reports.

Siegel says Di Modica will elaborate at a Wednesday news conference.

Di Modica, for the record, installed his bull statue (with testicles the size of soccer balls that finance types now believe are good luck charms), under cover of night in 1989—without a permit. After the public embraced the three-and-a-half ton masterpiece, the city allowed it to stay.