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About this series

This occasional series of blog posts will highlight the most important of the outdoor sculptures in New York City and provide some historical and art-historical context. To read other blog posts in this series, click on the New York City Sculpture tag. For photos of all outdoor sculptures in New York City in chronological order, see my Instagram page.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/NDz6UO9ybrc.

Posts 1-7 looked at the subjects of outdoor sculptures, in the order in which they appeared. In the first, we saw sculptures of animals and politicians. In the second, we saw our first military and literary heroes. The third post included a list of memorials to the Civil War, and the fourth post, figures active before 1800, including Founding Fathers. The fifth was on businessmen. The sixth was on figures in the arts. The seventh included allegorical figures through 1918.

The next four posts in the series looked at sculptors who were famous in New York City and throughout America: John Quincy Adams Ward, Augustus Saint Gaudens, Frederick MacMonnies, and Daniel Chester French.

In this post and the next, we look at an assortment of sculptures that show the same subjects we’ve already seen – but with important differences. World War I led to massive death and destruction. The Old Guard, the old ways of doing things, were perceived to have failed: what else could be responsible for the 17 million military and civilian casualties, including 100,000 Americans? In the war’s aftermath, artists as well as many others displayed a sharp change in political attitudes and in sense of life. Jazz music became the rage, along with short skirts, fast cars … and the sort of modern art that was introduced to the American public by the Armory Show of 1913. (On the Armory Show, see here, here, and here. We will only look at the abstract descendants of the Armory Show in passing and askance in the last post of this series.)

Animals

Post-WWI sculptures in New York City include a couple dozen animals – mostly playful works aimed at children. The most unusual is Balto, the only portrait of an animal standing outdoors in New York City. To understand why, we have to go back to Nome, Alaska, in 1925. In the era of trains, planes, and steamships, delivering the cure for a deadly diphtheria outbreak to icebound Nome still had to be done by relays of dogsleds. New Yorkers listened to the progress of the relay breathlessly on the radio, a new invention. They were so excited that within a year, they raised funds for this sculpture of one of the sled dogs.

The most remarkable collection of animal sculptures in New York City is at the Hispanic Society of America. All these sculptures from the 1920s and 1930s are the work of Anna Hyatt Huntington. For the courtyard of the institution her husband established, Huntington sculpted Spain’s national hero, the Cid, and surrounded him by the fauna of Spain: a family of deer plus groups of vultures, boars, jaguars, and bears. Her pair of lions flanks the entrance to the HSA’s headquarters.

Among later animal sculptures, some of the most imaginative and memorable are the Delacorte Clock in Central Park (1965) and two works by Paul Manship: Group of Bears (1932, this cast 1991) and the Osborn Memorial Playground Gateway (1952), which illustrates tales from Aesop’s Fables.

And of course, there’s the most famous of all New York’s animal sculptures – arguably NYC’s most reproduced sculpture, since tourists can buy cheap reproductions. Di Modica’s Charging Bull was created in 1989 to symbolize the strength and hope of the American people following the stock market crash in 1987.

Politicians

During the early twentieth century, US and local governments ballooned in size – so it’s not surprising that after WWI, the number of sculptures of contemporary politicians also balloons. New Yorkers erected large memorials or life-size figures to Mayor William Jay Gaynor (1926), Samuel J. Tilden (1926), Theodore Roosevelt (1940), Gov. Alfred E. Smith (1946), Eleanor Roosevelt (1996), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2012: a bust that’s as large as a full-size figure). Smaller tributes (busts or reliefs) went up to another half dozen politicians, including John F. Kennedy.

The Founding Fathers and nineteenth-century leaders seldom appear after WWI. Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton are paired on the façade of the Museum of the City of New York (ca. 1940). Abraham Lincoln appears with a child (1948) and George Washington as a Freemason (1967), rather than the Father of Our Country.

New York also has seven large or life-size sculptures of political and military leaders of Latin America on Sixth Avenue (1921-2000), plus a smattering of other nationalities: Lojas Kossuth (Hungarian, 1927), King Jagiello (Polish, 1939), Mohandas Gandhi (Indian, 1986), and Vladimir Lenin (Russian, 1989).

Next week: post-WWI figures in the military, the arts, and more.

More

• My Instagram account shows every outdoor sculpture in New York City, since in chronological order, with a short blurb on the subject and/or artist of each.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and my Patreon page (free or by subscription): details here.