On view through 15 March 2014
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
Columbia University
Schermerhorn Hall, 8th floor
New York, NY 10027
Enter Campus at 116th Street and Broadway
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 1–5pm
Exhibition overview
Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) was once among New York City’s most prominent sculptors. At a time when very few women were successful artists, she had a thriving career. She exhibited often, traveled widely, received critical acclaim at home and abroad, and won awards and commissions. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Hyatt Huntington became famous for her animal sculptures, which combine vivid emotional depth with skillful realism. In 1915, she created the first public monument in New York City by a woman: Her Joan of Arc, located on Riverside Drive at 93rd Street, is also the city’s first monument dedicated to a historical woman.
Hyatt Huntington’s work is now displayed in many of New York’s leading institutions and outdoor spaces, including Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the New-York Historical Society, the Hispanic Society, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Central Park, Riverside Park and the Bronx Zoo. Despite the presence of her sculptures throughout the city, Hyatt Huntington is not well-recognized today. The Wallach exhibition aims to redress that.
Hyatt Huntington worked on every scale, from monumental sculpture to medals. This exhibition brings her largest statues into the gallery with digital technology. Visitors are able to see the Riverside Park Joan of Arc in its actual, larger-than-life scale in detail, through an interactive high-resolution, rotational photography created for the exhibition by Columbia’s Media Center for Art History. Alongside this digital projection of the monument is a smaller, 45-inch-high version of the sculpture. Also in the exhibition is Hyatt Huntington’s life-size, bronze Diana of the Chase, from 1922, surrounded by fourteen of Hyatt Huntington’s animal sculptures are at the Wallach, ranging from jaguars and monkeys to greyhounds and cranes Both Diana, goddess of beasts and of the hunt, and Joan of Arc represented alter egos of the artist.
Anne Higonnet, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University, organized the exhibition, in collaboration with Columbia MA student Kitty Dare, as assistant project coordinator. A class of PhD, MA and BA students from Barnard and Columbia assisted and contributed original new scholarship, which both clarifies Hyatt Huntington’s production, trajectory and work dates, and reconsiders her pioneering contributions to American sculpture. “All around New York City, in its parks, zoos and museums, beloved sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington remains, its author forgotten,” said Professor Higonnet. “This exhibition, its catalogue and a related website are products of an experiment in applied teaching and collaborative digital publishing.”
This exhibition is made possible by an endowment from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation. An anonymous benefactor funded the catalogue.
About The Wallach Art Gallery
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery contributes to Columbia’s long-standing tradition of historical, critical and creative engagement in the visual arts. The Wallach presents exhibitions and related programming that reflect the diversity of interests and approaches to the arts at Columbia and embody the university’s high standards for research and instruction. Exhibitions strive to include the broad range of research and production undertaken by students and faculty, and to animate the university’s rich cultural resources.
*Anna Hyatt Huntington, Cranes Rising, 1934. Collection Art Properties, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University in the City of New York; gift of the artist (C00.837). Photo by Mark Ostrander. Courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.