Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History

With the order for the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, Emma Stebbins became the first woman to earn a public sculpture commission from the city of New York. Today, this monument is a beloved global icon, while the full scope of Stebbins’s history-making life and work is virtually unknown. Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History recognizes her as one of the most significant American sculptors of the nineteenth century.

From 1857 to 1870, Stebbins created innovative marble and bronze sculptures while living in Rome with renowned Shakespearean actress Charlotte Cushman, who championed her career. Stebbins modeled inventive and incisive interpretations of literary and biblical subjects, unprecedented allegories of American industry, and notable portraits of her friends and family. When Bostonians installed her statue of educator Horace Mann on the grounds of the Massachusetts State House in 1865, she became the first woman in the country to complete an outdoor bronze monument. Stebbins―a professional sculptor in a female marriage―reimagined what a woman’s life could be in the mid-nineteenth century. Her art speaks to some of the most compelling issues of her time and ours, including gender and sexuality, ecology and industry, and political conflict and public art.

This volume presents scholarly essays by an international group of curators and historians and reflections on Stebbins’s work by contemporary artists alongside stunning reproductions representing the breadth of her career, as well as images of several newly discovered sculptures. Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History accompanies the nationally touring museum exhibition of the same name.