Penelope Jencks
Penelope Jencks is an American sculptor, a graduate of Boston University. Her public works include a statue of the historian Samuel Eliot Morison, on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Robert Frost Sculpture at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. She is best known, however, for her statue of Eleanor Roosevelt in New York City.The Eleanor Roosevelt Monument, located in New York City's Riverside Park, is said to be the first monument dedicated to an American president's wife. Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address at the monument's October 1996 dedication.
The statue, the boulder on which it leans, and the foot stone on which it rests, all sculpted by Jencks, form the centerpiece of a heavily planted circular memorial designed by the landscape architects Bruce Kelly and David Varnell. The architect Michael Dwyer designed inscriptions in the surrounding granite pavement, including a quotation from Roosevelt's 1958 speech at the United Nations advocating universal human rights, and a bronze tablet, located in the planting bed, summarizing her achievements.Gallery
