The newest addition to the Peace Garden at California State University, Fresno – a life-sized statue of 20th peace advocate and Nobel Prize winner Jane Addams – will be unveiled for the campus and the community Thursday, April 6.

Students will get the first look in an afternoon ceremony and the impressive bronze statue will be formally unveiled and dedicated at a dinner program that evening. A limited number of tickets for the dinner are available for purchase.

Present at the evening program will be Claudia Nolan, a graduate student in sculpture at Fresno State who created the statue. Speaking will be Dr. Paul Pribbenow, president of Rockford (Ill.) College, Addams’ alma mater; Dr. Regina Birchem, international president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom of which Addams was the first president; and Fresno State President Dr. John D. Welty.

Also on the program is the world premiere performance of “Music for The Peace Garden” by Dr. Robert Strizich, performed by the Guitar Quartet of Fresno State. A special movement was written for Jane Addams. Strizich is a music faculty member at Fresno State.

The Addams statue will join those of Mahatma Gandhi (installed in 1990), César Chávez (1996) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1999). The Addams statue is the first Peace Garden memorial depicting a woman, the first designed and sculpted by a woman and the first produced by a Fresno State student.

The bronze sculpture depicts Addams lifting aloft a small, immigrant child holding a globe. The sculpture was cast at Arizona Bronze Atelier in Tempe, Ariz. It sits on a 4,000-pound black granite base from a quarry in India.

The new statue, like the others in the Peace Garden, is being financed through private giving. The largest single donation was $23,000 from the Associated Students. Additional donations are sought and may be sent to Woman of Peace Project, California State University, Fresno, Human Resources, 5150 N. Maple Ave., M/S JA41, Fresno, CA 93740-8026.

Table sponsorships for the April 6 dinner are available starting at $1,500. Individual tickets are $110. The reservation deadline is March 27. For sponsorship and ticket information and purchase call 559.278.7137 or 559.278.2364.

For information about the Peace Garden, please go to the following Web site:

www.csufresno.edu/peacegarden.