In public parks throughout the United States, among the foliage and greenery, sit soldiers, presidents, and other men and women in weather-worn limestone or patinated bronze. Often overlooked by passersby, these sculptures remind those who do stop of the national or local events that have shaped the country’s history. Many date from the monument-building boom that followed the Civil War, when sculptors were beginning to swap out warriors in heroic poses for more solemn memorials to the dead. Born just two years apart, beaux-arts sculptors Daniel Chester French and Augustus Saint-Gaudens took a leading role in the stylistic shift. The pair grew up during a period of great change in the United States, living through the Civil War, the inauguration and death of President Abraham Lincoln, and the first turbulent years of Reconstruction before they reached the age of twenty. Both sculptors would go on to memorialize Lincoln multiple times in similarly somber poses, the most famous example being French’s colossal likeness of the president at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Monuments and Myths: The America of Sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, a traveling exhibition on view at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum until late May, was born from the creative minds at the American Federation of the Arts, the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, and Chesterwood, French’s summer home and studio in the Berkshires. The show comprises pieces from the collections of both Chesterwood and Saint-Gaudens’s house in New Hampshire, Aspet, both part of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In fact, the exhibition is the result of a HAHS members’ convention at Chesterwood in 2019, where attendees from both sites realized the similarities between the artists’ homes, as well as their lives and careers.
The Frist has the privilege of hosting seventy pieces by the “friendly rivals,” in what is the first ever exhibition to focus on French and Saint-Gaudens together. The pair were inextricably linked by more than their age and experiences, running in the same circles and even hiring the same models. The two ultimately shared a friendship, spending time at each other’s summer estates and New York City studios.
In June, Monuments and Myths moves to the Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania. Visitors there will have access to an additional sculpture not exhibited at the Frist: a large plaster model of French’s final work, Andromeda. French’s interpretation in marble of the Greek myth is on view at Chesterwood, atop a rotating dais on a track leading out of the artist’s studio that was installed so that he could work on his sculptures en plein air.
The exhibition comes at an interesting time for memorial sculpture. In an era of national reflection, public monuments and memorials are being scrutinized, particularly those representing the Civil War era. Donna Hassler, director emerita of Chesterwood, and Rick Kendall, superintendent of the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, mark the significance of the show’s timing in their introduction to its catalogue: “The swell of current events further shaped the project, as nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd Jr., and societal backlash against memorials and monuments to historical figures who promoted or defended slavery and discrimination placed public sculptures front and center in national discourse.” As prominent figures in American sculpture and teachers of the next generation of sculptors, any discussion of that era would be incomplete without note of French’s and Saint-Gaudens’s contributions.
Monuments and Myths: The America of Sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French • Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee • to May 27 • fristartmuseum.org
Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania • June 29 to January 5, 2025 • michenerartmuseum.org
