This statue, created by Donal Hord in 1935 through President Franklin Roosevelt’s ”New Deal” Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project, sits outside Balboa Park’s House of Hospitality, home to the Park’s Visitor Center today in San Diego, California.  This is one of several statues by the artist throughout San Diego. (For more information on his other statues, please see the following page on the artist.). The Woman of Tehuantepec is unique as one of the only examples of a female and non-white subject located in the city.  

The statue was created for the California Pacific International Exposition held in Balboa Park in 1935, eighteen years after the original Panama-California Exposition was held that created most of the structures. It represents both Donal Hord’s interest in the native populations in the greater region and water as a life source. The original audience was for the visitors attending the California-Pacific International Exposition and the Woman of Tehuantepec has maintained a place of prominence, the audience now consisting of Balboa Park visitors. Since then it has suffered from the elements that have eaten away at the Indiana limestone used to create the statue. The statue suffered from decades of built up of mineral deposits and bird droppings and was finally refurbished in 2015. The professional refurbishment cost less than $4,000 according to a Baltimore Sun article published at that time, so it is unfortunate that it took so long to clean up such an iconic statue.

Sources Disclaimer: All images from this page and subsequent two child pages are taken by Carrie Giardino, Flickr, Wikimedia Commons and San Diego Historical Society. All text has been referenced from the following sources: San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego Historical Society, Smithsonian Institution, Archive of the Mendocino Heritage Artists, sandiego.gov, sandiegoyesterday.com, balboapark.org, California Pacific International Exposition Digital Archive

HIST 587 Final Project Spring 2023

Eliza Frohoff & Carrie Giardino