Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973) was an American sculptor of animals who founded the nation’s first sculpture garden, Brookgreen Gardens, in 1932. Hyatt Huntington, whose personal papers are housed at Syracuse University, is an important yet understudied artist. Focusing on Hyatt Huntington’s sculptures in Brookgreen Gardens and on the gardens themselves, which also included a zoo, this paper will examine themes of labor in the artist’s oeuvre. Hyatt Huntington placed an emphasis on hard work as she fought to distinguish herself as a sculptor in a male-dominated field. The products of her labor often venerate the work of animals, from bulls to horses to jaguars. Many of these sculptures are situated at Brookgreen Gardens. Founded at the dawn of the Great Depression, the gardens provide an opportunity to study her work in an era in which labor became a central theme for many artists, who, like Hyatt Huntington, saw hard work as a means to a better future. The multifaceted views of labor manifested in Hyatt Huntington’s work offer critical insights into her sculptures and American art at the time, as labor transforms her sculptures from realistic depictions of animals into beacons of toil, endeavor, and meaningful production.

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Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture

The Artist, the Workhorse: Labor in the Sculpture of Anna Hyatt Huntington

Abram Belskie, a talented young Scottish immigrant landed in New York just as the Great Depression was getting underway. Fortunately, he found work with John Gregory, sculpting the panels for the new Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. His sculpting talent soon led him to Closter, NJ where he met and worked with many of the fine American sculptors of the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. It was through one of these fine artists that he was introduced to Robert L. Dickinson with whom he produced his exceptional opus, the Birth of a Baby, in a series of life size sculptures (Figure 1).

http://www.jbiocommunication.org/issues/35-3/assets/feature2/Demarest_JBCv35n3.pdf

Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture

Citations

The Artist, the Workhorse: Labor in the Sculpture of Anna Hyatt Huntington

Abram Belskie, Sculptor, and the Famous American Sculptors with Whom He Worked