Designer Goodacre Receives $5,000 in Sacagawea coins

Just about all coin collectors know the 2000 Sacagawea or "Golden" dollar coin was designed by sculptor Glenna Goodacre.

Goodacre is now about to collect her $5,000 fee for designing the coin. She will receive a bag of $5,000 face value in dollar coins--and they won't be Susan B. Anthony dollars either!

That's right, Ms. Goodacre will endorse the coin bearing her design by bagging the coins themselves. Now let's see if her bank can figure them out long enough for her to make a deposit.

The presentation was made April 5 in Santa Fe, NM. The event celebrated the collaborative achievement between Goodacre and the US Mint. The presentation of the big bucks was held at Goodacre's studio where the acclaimed relief of Sacagawea was created.

Goodacre's design for the coin was chosen from more than 121 submissions made by 23 sculptors. The submissions were shown to historians, public officials, representatives of Indian organizations, coin collectors, and various arts organizations, including the US Commission on Fine Arts. Mint officials then selected 13 designs (over half of which were Goodacre's) which were then posted on the Mint's Internet site to gain feedback from the American public. From the 120,000 responses that came in via the Internet, the majority favored Goodacre's image of the young mother and her infant son.

According to Mint officials, there are no coins depicting a mother and child currently in circulation.

The clay relief Goodacre created for the coin depicts Sacagawea turning in anticipation, as if ready to leave, with her baby in a pouch asleep on her back. The word "Liberty" crowns her head, an irony since history indicates Sacagawea was a slave sold to a white man as one of his two wives.

Goodacre may live in New Mexico, but she was born in Texas. She trained as a painter, beginning sculpture later in her career. Her first solo exhibition as a sculptor was in 1971. She has since won numerous awards and honors from the National Sculpture Society and the National Academy of Design, among others. A major retrospective of her work was presented by Texas Tech University in 1995.

Considered by many to be "America's sculptor," Goodacre is currently working on The Irish Famine Memorial in Philadelphia as part of the 150th Anniversary of "The Irish Starvation" in Ireland. The Irish Famine Memorial, which will feature more than 25 figures in a bronze sculpture with engaging subjects from every angle, will be Goodacre's largest work to date (and quite a jump from the size of a coin). The narrative sculpture will be installed in the historic Penn's Landing district. The memorial should be ready for installation by the spring of 2002. Goodacre was selected by the Irish Memorial Committee from a competitive group of more than 100 international artists.

Perhaps Goodacre's most prominent work is the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project on the Mall in Washington DC. The sculpture, installed in 1993 as part of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, was the first public artwork to specifically honor the contribution of women to the Vietnam War. Other commissioned works by Goodacre are on view in more than 25 states, and her work is represented in numerous private, corporate, national and international collections.

In case you can't identify Goodacre from her famous sculptural work, you can always identify her as the woman you saw going down the street lugging a bag of 5,000 Sacagawea dollar coins to the bank.