Monuments and Myths: The America of Sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) and Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) were the preeminent American sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As friendly rivals, they transformed sculpture in the United States, producing some of the country’s most recognizable public artworks, including French’s Seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and Saint-Gaudens’s Diana, which graced the top of Madison Square Garden in New York. With an aesthetic of remarkable formal elegance, Gaudens and French created a picture of national ambition rooted in conceptions of liberty, grandeur, and common cause. These narratives of an ascendant America, however, reflect only a partial vision of the nation. Rife with the potential for multiple meanings and contested histories, the artworks in this exhibition encourage us to question the stories that public art tells and to explore what—and whose—histories remain hidden from view.