Margot McMahon, a nationally recognized sculptor and environmental artist, has spent decades creating works that celebrate the quiet dignity of everyday people and the natural world they inhabit.
It was fitting then that she would be commissioned to create a statue personifying the moment when Ikeda Sensei, on his first trip to the U.S. in October 1960, made a grand declaration for human rights.
On the morning of Oct. 9, Sensei was walking in Chicago’s Lincoln Park when he stopped to watch several young boys kicking around a ball. They invited others to join in but not a young African American boy who had come along. They, in fact, ignored him until he laughed when one of the young boys tripped and fell to the ground.
An elderly white man rose from a park bench and screamed at the young boy, who fled in painful humiliation. “What feelings did the boy take with him as he ran off?” Sensei wondered at the time. “If such treatment occurred every day, then the boy’s heart must have been cruelly assaulted time and again, leaving a gaping wound that bled with anger and sadness” (The New Human Revolution, vol. 1, revised edition, p. 157).
As he thought of this young boy’s future, Sensei vowed in his heart: “I promise you that I will build a society truly worthy of your love and pride” (NHR-1, 161).
The “Peace and Justice” statue that McMahon created was installed in Lincoln Park in October 2010, marking the 50th anniversary of Sensei’s first journey to America to spread the humanistic tenets of Nichiren Buddhism throughout the world. The statue depicts two boys, one African American and the other white, tossing a ball to each other.
A native of Illinois, McMahon earned an MFA in sculpture in 1984 from Yale University. She has since taught at Yale’s Norfolk Summer School, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and DePaul University, helping shape the next generation of visual artists.
Her work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Chicago History Museum and Yale University. “She’s the Studs Terkel of the sculpting world,” said one critic, referring to her ability to give voice to everyday figures through form and space.
—Prepared by the World Tribune staff
August 1, 2025 World Tribune, p. 12
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