Deadline nears for ‘Fearless Girl’ statue in New York

What was intended as a temporary display to encourage corporations to put more women on their boards is now getting a second look in light of its popularity, which has spawned an online petition seeking to keep it.

[...] the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull has been hugely popular in its own right; it was placed in a lower Manhattan traffic median in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit.

Holli Sargeant, 20, a visitor from Queensland, Australia, says the 4-foot-tall, 250-pound bronze girl is standing up against something and we see her as powerful image.

[...] shifting perceptions of the bull — from American hero to villain of sorts — outrage bull sculptor Arturo Di Modica, who wants the girl gone.

“Then we thought, this is a really big bull and we should increase the height to 50 inches,” she said.

The sculptor based her work on two Delaware children — a friend’s daughter she said had “great style and a great stance, and I told her to pretend she was facing a bull.”

Visbal, who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, while her American father was in the foreign service, is to be honored Monday along with State Street on the steps of New York’s City Hall by a group of prominent women who are asking that the statue be made permanent.

A spokesman for New York City, which controls public art in the area, did not say when a decision would be made.