Capturing the majesty of Brookgreen Gardens, this book explores one of the nation's oldest and largest sculpture gardens, where more than 550 works of American figurative sculpture are displayed in landscaped settings. Having expanded to accommodate cultural and historic exhibits that illustrate the distinctive life, history, and natural beauty of the region, the gardens are located on a 10,000-acre nature preserve that stretches from the Waccamaw River to the Atlantic Ocean in the lowcountry of South Carolina. Detailed are how the concept for the gardens originated in the 1920s when philanthropist, author, and collector Archer M. Huntington and his wife, Anna Hyatt, a noted sculptor, purchased three historic plantations, and how over the years the Huntingtons purchased the works of major 19th- and 20th-century sculptors and commissioned settings for the placement of these works. Gardening enthusiasts will discover the legendary beauty and enchanting past of one of America's most celebrated public gardens, which was designated a National Historic Landmark and opened to the public in 1931.
The story of the extraordinary life and art of a renowned female sculptor of realistic animal statues Dreaming with Animals is the first children's biography of celebrated sculptor and Brookgreen Gardens cofounder Anna Hyatt Huntington. Her remarkable life serves as an inspiration not only because of the greatness of her art but also because of her courage and perseverance. L. Kerr Dunn highlights how Anna overcame society's expectations of women and survived a life-threatening illness to become a prolific sculptor and an important benefactor of art and wildlife until her death at age ninety-seven. As a young woman, Anna moved to New York City at a time when American women of her class rarely lived alone or worked outside the home. Although she studied briefly under famous sculptors, she soon felt restless and left art school and began to teach herself to sculpt animals by watching them closely, trying to see the animal's true spirit and then representing that spirit in her work. Over time Anna established herself as an important animalier, an artist specializing in realistic portrayals of animals. By 1915 she was one of only ten American women artists earning enough money from the sales of her art to support herself. Later, with her husband, Archer Huntington, Anna founded South Carolina sculpture garden and wildlife preserve Brookgreen Gardens, the country's first public sculpture garden and the world's largest collection of figurative sculpture by American artists in an outdoor setting. This biography provides engaging details of Anna's life, such as her tendency as a child to lie in pastures studying horses; her travels around the country with her husband in a trailer full of monkeys, dogs, and birds; and the couple's purchase of a zoo. In Dreaming with Animals, Dunn has provided us with an affecting portrait of a strong, capable, talented, and innovative woman Robin R. Salmon, vice president for collections and curator of sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens, provides a foreword.
An oasis of art and nature, Brookgreen Gardens is America's first public sculpture garden and largest collection of American figurative sculpture. Founded in 1931 by Archer Milton Huntington and Anna Hyatt Huntington, its lush South Carolina coastal location is an exquisite setting for the more than two thousand works by four hundred twenty-five artists--including more than one hundred sculptures and other works by Anna Huntington, many placed in the gardens she designed. In 1984, Brookgreen was designated as a National Historic Landmark, highlighting the number of women sculptors whose work is presented in the collection, as well as the significance of the work of Anna Huntington. Today, Brookgreen has become a cultural institution unlike any other, blending sculpture, historic sites, botanical gardens, and the Lowcountry Zoo. As Brookgreen begins its ninetieth year, this volume celebrates the art, nature, and history ensconced in its 9,127 acres. More than one hundred color photographs; an introduction by president and CEO, Page Hayhurst Kiniry; and a foreword by its chairman of the board, Dick Rosen, bring Brookgreen Gardens to life on the page.
Stop, look, and discover—the streets and parks of Manhattan are filled with beautiful historic monuments that will entertain, stimulate, and inspire you. Among the 54 monuments in this volume are major figures in American history: Washington, Lincoln, Lafayette, Horace Greeley, and Gertrude Stein; more obscure figures: Daniel Butterfield, J. Marion Sims, and King Jagiello; as well as the icons of New York: Atlas, Prometheus, and the Firemen's Memorial. The monuments represent the work of some of America's best sculptors: Augustus Saint Gaudens’ Farragut and Sherman, Daniel Chester French’s Four Continents, and Anna Hyatt Huntington’s José Martí and Joan of Arc. Each monument, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, is located on a map of Manhattan and includes easy-to-follow directions. All the sculptures are considered both as historical mementos and as art. We learn of furious General Sherman court-martialing a civilian journalist, and also of exasperated Saint Gaudens’ proposing a hook-and-spring device for improving his assistants' artistic acuity as they help model Sherman. We discover how Lincoln dealt with a vociferous Confederate politician from Ohio, and why the Lincoln in Union Square doesn't rank as a top-notch Lincoln portrait. Sidebars reveal other aspects of the figure or event commemorated, using personal quotes, poems, excerpts from nineteenth-century periodicals (New York Times, Harper's Weekly), and writers ranging from Aeschylus, Washington Irving, and Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi to Mark Twain and Henryk Sienkiewicz. As a historical account, Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide is a fascinating look at figures and events that changed New York, the United States and the world. As an aesthetic handbook it provides a compact method for studying sculpture, inspired by Ayn Rand’s writings on art. For residents and tourists, and historians and students, who want to spend more time viewing and appreciating sculpture and New York history, this is the start of a unique voyage of discovery.
Brookgreen Gardens evolved into the cultural attraction it is today from its beginning in 1930 as a winter home for philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. The 9,000-acre tract had been four rice plantations as early as the 18th century. Home to rice planters, sportsmen, statesmen, industrialists, horticulturists, soldiers, novelists, artists, and poets, Brookgreen has entertained the great and the humble throughout its 300-year history. This book provides photographic glimpses of the men, women, and places connected with the land that became Brookgreen Gardens and documents Brookgreen's emergence as America's first public sculpture garden. A National Historic Landmark, Brookgreen's significance rests in its history and in its future service to visitors.
Brookgreen Gardens expansive property exhibits the finest outdoor collection of American figurative sculpture in the world. It began in 1930 as a winter home for philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. When the Huntingtons founded Brookgreen Gardens in the following year, they initially placed artworks from their own collection. By 1932, they had begun to actively purchase sculpture and to commission prominent sculptors to create works for the gardens. This volume portrays Brookgreens beginning as the first public sculpture garden in America and its rise as a respected museum of American sculpture. In 1992, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, recognizing Anna Hyatt Huntingtons status as an important sculptor and patron of the arts and Brookgreens significance as a site for womens history in America.
Published on occasion of the exhibition Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936, this exhibition catalogue celbrates the life and work of New York City sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973). Hyatt Huntington's work is 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. This publication aims to redress that by focusing on her noted New York career, including the first public monument in New York City by a woman: her Joan of Arc on Riverside Drive and 93rd street. Over thirteen feet high, her martial equestrian heroine, clad in armor from head to toe and cast in bronze, was also the city's first public monument to a historical woman. Meanwhile, Hyatt Huntington had become famous for her animal sculptures that combined ferocious spirit with skillful realism, many of which are included in this exhibition catalogue.
History, Mystery, and Romance in the Carolina Lowcountry! A haunted necklace, a trickster rabbit, an ingenious slave, a shrieking droll, and a fianc returned from the dead all come to life in Lynn Michelsohn's new collection of Carolina Lowcountry ghost stories and folklore from the four historic rice plantations making up Brookgreen GardensSouth Carolina's popular tourist attraction near Myrtle Beach. These enchanting folktales, tied to specific plantation locations and historical events, enrich the enjoyment of any visit to the Lowcountry for tourists, armchair travelers, or devotees of ghost stories and folklore. Lynn Michelsohn, a tenth generation Carolinian, is clearly drawn to history, mystery, and romance wherever she finds it, as her previous book, "Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!" explores intrigues of a different kind. Now, in "Tales from Brookgreen" her charming retelling of these sometimes-eerie, sometimes-sad, sometimes-humorous tales engages readers in characters and folkways unique to the Carolina Lowcountry.
Scholarly essays on the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South Looking back at her lengthy career just four years before her death, modernist painter Nell Blaine said, "Art is central to my life. Not being able to make or see art would be a major deprivation." The Virginia native's creative path began early, and, during the course of her life, she overcame significant barriers in her quest to make and even see art, including serious vision problems, polio, and paralysis. And then there was her gender. In 1957 Blaine was hailed by Life magazine as someone to watch, profiled alongside four other emerging painters whom the journalist praised "not as notable women artists but as notable artists who happen to be women." In Central to Their Lives, twenty-six noted art historians offer scholarly insight into the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South. Spanning the decades between the late 1890s and early 1960s, this volume examines the complex challenges these artists faced in a traditionally conservative region during a period in which women's social, cultural, and political roles were being redefined and reinterpreted. The presentation—and its companion exhibition—features artists from all of the Southern states, including Dusti Bongé, Anne Goldthwaite, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Ida Kohlmeyer, Loïs Mailou Jones, Alma Thomas, and Helen Turner. These essays examine how the variables of historical gender norms, educational barriers, race, regionalism, sisterhood, suffrage, and modernism mitigated and motivated these women who were seeking expression on canvas or in clay. Whether working from studio space, in spare rooms at home, or on the world stage, these artists made remarkable contributions to the art world while fostering future generations of artists through instruction, incorporating new aesthetics into the fine arts, and challenging the status quo. Sylvia Yount, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides a foreword to the volume. Contributors: Sara C. Arnold Daniel Belasco Lynne Blackman Carolyn J. Brown Erin R. Corrales-Diaz John A. Cuthbert Juilee Decker Nancy M. Doll Jane W. Faquin Elizabeth C. Hamilton Elizabeth S. Hawley Maia Jalenak Karen Towers Klacsmann Sandy McCain Dwight McInvaill Courtney A. McNeil Christopher C. Oliver Julie Pierotti Deborah C. Pollack Robin R. Salmon Mary Louise Soldo Schultz Martha R. Severens Evie Torrono Stephen C. Wicks Kristen Miller Zohn
