The bronze statue of Matthew Vassar is a staple view in my everyday travels. To my surprise, the statue was only erected in 2006, 16 years ago and 138 years after Vassar's death. The statue was envisioned by Matthew Vassar himself, inspired by the statue of his relative Thomas Guy at Guy's Hospital in London. Matthew Vassar even offered to loan the college $25,000 (the equivalent of ~$500,000 today) to fund the statue. The modern effort to develop the statue was sparked by the 1999 discovery of a maquette of Matthew Vassar developed during the previously-mentioned efforts.

I find not only the self-idolization of Matthew Vassar strange (albeit it was perhaps expected from a rich old white man in the 19th century), but also the modern-day idolization of him. In contemporary writings about Matthew Vassar, he is described as “the Founder”, capitalized as if he were God. Monuments illustrate what communities value, and I think it is interesting that the same community over a hundred-and-some years wanted to memorialize the same person. Why do we choose to idolize Matthew Vassar? It could be in part due to the continued wishes of Vassar College leaders to become idols themselves, like how President Frances Fergusson was at the forefront of this statue's creation. In the same way Matthew Vassar was willing to loan money to the college to memorialize himself, perhaps Fergusson wanted to memorialize herself by working to memorialize figures similar to her, like Matthew Vassar, perpetuating a culture that would work to memorialize her.

Of course, it's impossible to know Fergusson's motivations for certain, but I wouldn't rule out that, in general, part of the memorialization of figures like Matthew Vassar (who already have more than enough attention) is this kind of pay-it-forward attitude. Ignoring the question of whether we should give this much credit to Matthew Vassar in the first place, do we really need a statue to remember who he is? The whole college is named after him! This is not to mention that his name is plastered on the very building behind where the statue stands, a stark reminder of the presence of his mythos on campus. Perhaps a memorial to the other people who helped create the college — the faculty, the trustees, the first students — would serve us better and would help prevent some of the idolization of “the Founder” that we experience today.