New design for Sacagawea dollar
Designs unveiled for new Native American $1 coins
Program to launch in 2009The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which is responsible for advising the secretary of the treasury on themes and designs pertaining to U.S. coinage, reviewed 15 design candidates June 18 and selected a creation portraying a female American Indian figure planting seeds in a cornfield.
Another popular design, which came in second place, featured three female Indians surrounded by squash, corn and beans. It represented the traditional Native "Three Sisters" system of planting the crops, which tend to supplement each other when grown in the same location.
In consultation with the National Museum of the American Indian and other Native groups, the Mint decided to focus on Indian agricultural achievements for the first year of its Native American $1 coin program, which will officially launch in 2009. Comment: Of the three choices pictured, I like the third one (the half-hidden one with the pottery) best.
The winning choice has a good concept: an Indian woman tending her crops. This might be the first US coin ever with women on both sides. But the actual picture of the woman in profile is kind of bland. A figure on a novel's or comic book's cover would never be positioned so passively.
I'm not crazy about the second choice. The three women look too similar (perhaps they're supposed to be actual sisters, not symbolic sisters). They don't have strong Indian features, and the features they do have are somewhat indistinct. The woman with the flower in her hair says "Hawaiian" to me.
For more on the subject, see Native Agriculture on Dollar.
Program to launch in 2009
Another popular design, which came in second place, featured three female Indians surrounded by squash, corn and beans. It represented the traditional Native "Three Sisters" system of planting the crops, which tend to supplement each other when grown in the same location.
In consultation with the National Museum of the American Indian and other Native groups, the Mint decided to focus on Indian agricultural achievements for the first year of its Native American $1 coin program, which will officially launch in 2009.
The winning choice has a good concept: an Indian woman tending her crops. This might be the first US coin ever with women on both sides. But the actual picture of the woman in profile is kind of bland. A figure on a novel's or comic book's cover would never be positioned so passively.
I'm not crazy about the second choice. The three women look too similar (perhaps they're supposed to be actual sisters, not symbolic sisters). They don't have strong Indian features, and the features they do have are somewhat indistinct. The woman with the flower in her hair says "Hawaiian" to me.
For more on the subject, see Native Agriculture on Dollar.
posted by Rob at 8:40 PM
5 Comments:
Writerfella here --
In the case of the 1913 U.S. Buffalo 5 cent piece, the Native man's face depicted on the reverse was a combination of three Native men's faces by the artist James Earle Fraser. U.S. law states that no non-historical person's image may be depicted on currency. Thus it likely is that the women depicted for the Sacagawea dollar are combinations of several persons' faces...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Sacawagea was modeled on a real Native woman. Since this woman was used only as a likeness for Sacagawea, it didn't violate any law.
This approach is better than inventing faces out of thin air. It's why the coin's obverse looks more realistic than the proposed reverse.
For more on the subject, see Shoshone Woman Modeled Sacagawea.
Writerfella here --
And the same articles say that the artist used other models before settling on her choice for Sacagawea. What did she do, burn her original sketches and have the other models scrubbed from her memory? Unlikely, and so there was a conglomerate image after all...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
It's only your guess that artist Goodacre relied on her memory of previous models as well as the woman in front of her. Since you have no evidence for this silly speculation, it's a waste of time.
Fact is, you misunderstood the law on depicting living people. If a coin depicts a dead person who was modeled on a living person, it's perfectly legal.
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