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April 29, 2024 at 02:48 PM
What You Need to Know
- The firm and the artist it commissioned to create the sculpture have reached an agreement on the eve of a trial.
- The work was part of a McCann ad campaign urging corporate boards to add more women as State Street was promoting its exchange-traded fund SHE.
- Just seven months after the statue’s installation, State Street agreed to pay $5 million to resolve charges that it discriminated against hundreds of female executives by paying them less than their male colleagues.
State Street Corp. and the artist it commissioned to create Wall Street’s sculpture have settled a 2019 lawsuit on the eve of trial.
The bank, which commissioned the artwork, was set to square off against the sculptor, Kristen Visbal, in a trial starting Monday in lower Manhattan over replicas she sold that it claimed violated rights agreements between them.
The two sides offered no details of the settlement in a court filing over the weekend.
In its suit, filed two years after the bronze suddenly appeared in 2017 across from the financial district’s landmark Charging Bull, State Street alleged breach of contract and trademark infringement against Visbal, who denied the allegations and filed claims of her own.
The suit thrust the piece back into the spotlight after the bank installed it just before International Women’s Day in March 2017.
The work was part of a McCann ad campaign urging corporate boards to add more women as State Street was promoting its exchange-traded fund SHE, featuring U.S. companies with gender-diverse senior management.
It was supposed to be in place for just 30 days.
But images of the dauntless girl went viral, generating worldwide news media coverage and drawing thousands of people to its location on lower Broadway.
State Street and Visbal then negotiated the rights agreements that became the subject of their dispute.
