Standing Liberty Quarters

Hermon Atkins MacNeil designed the Standing Liberty quarter, and the coin's brief history is dominated by a controversy that had nothing to do with its artistic merit. MacNeil was a well-regarded sculptor who had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris, and his original 1916 design showed Liberty standing in a gap in a wall, holding a shield in one hand and an olive branch in the other, with her right breast exposed. The design was intended as an allegorical figure, following classical tradition, and MacNeil saw nothing inappropriate about it. The public, or at least the vocal portion of it, disagreed. Complaints about the bare breast reached Congress and the Treasury, and in 1917 the Mint modified the design to cover Liberty with a coat of chain mail. MacNeil later said he had planned the change himself for artistic reasons unrelated to the controversy, but the timing was suspicious and most historians have concluded that the modification was a response to public pressure regardless of what MacNeil claimed afterward.