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Alice Morgan Wright

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Alice Morgan Wright

Alice Morgan Wright (Albany, New York, October 10, 1881 - Albany, April 8, 1975) was an American sculptor, suffragist, and animal rights activist. She was one of the first American artists to embrace Cubism and Futurism.[1]

Biography

Wright came from an old Albany family. She was a student at St. Agnes School in Albany (now Doane Stuart School).[2] A graduate of Smith College, she continued her studies in New York City. Prohibited from attending life studies at the Art Students League of New York, Wright watched local boxing and wrestling competitions in order to study the human form.[3][4] In 1909, she went to Paris, where she attended the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Colarossi.

She exhibited domestically at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and her work appeared in Europe at the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and the Salon des Beaux Arts (Paris).[5] She was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors as well as a founding member and director of the Society of Independent Artists.[6]

Wright was also an ardent suffragist. She helped to bring the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst to a speaking engagement in Paris and felt inspired to go to London herself to join the suffrage movement there. With the National Women's Social and Political Union, she participated in militant demonstrations in England. She was incarcerated for two months in Holloway Prison, London. With other suffragettes, she protested her treatment by participating in a hunger strike. She also used smuggled plasteline to model a portrait bust of her fellow prisoner, Pankhurst.[7] Wright continued her suffrage activism after her return to the United States in 1914. She was Recording Secretary of the Woman's Suffrage Party of New York during the winning campaign.[8] In 1921, she helped to create the League of Women Voters of New York State.[9]

Wright's years back in New York City were extremely fruitful. She won many awards for her work, including the Gutzon Borglum and the Augustus Saint-Gaudens prizes. "The Fist," perhaps her best known sculpture, shows the modernist influence of Auguste Rodin; other works, like "Medea" (1920), integrated avant-garde Cubist and even Futurist elements. But Wright also produced more conventional pieces throughout her career.

In 1920, Wright returned to Albany and gradually turned away from art to focus on political activism, especially animal rights.[10] With Edith J. Goode, she founded the National Humane Society, later renamed the Humane Society of the United States. Wright and Goode were lifetime companions.[11]

Betsy Fahlman curated a retrospective exhibit of Wright's work in 1978 at the Albany Institute of Art and History. Wright's extensive personal papers are open to researchers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

  • "Medea"
    "Medea"
  • "The Off-Shore Wind"
    "The Off-Shore Wind"

Selected works

  • Emmeline Pankhurst (1912), Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, Washington, D.C.
  • The Fist (1921), Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, N.Y.[12]
  • "Medea," Albany Institute of History and Art
  • "The Trojan Women," Albany Institute of History and Art

Notes

  1. ^ Mankiller, Wilma Pearl; Mink, Gwendolyn; Navarro, Marysa; Steinem, Gloria; Smith, Barbara (October 1999). The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 522–. ISBN 0-618-00182-4.
  2. ^ "Alice Morgan Wright Papers, 1873-1994". Five College Archives & Manuscript Collections. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
  3. ^ Albany Institute, 55
  4. ^ Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors (1990), p. 221
  5. ^ "Alice Morgan Wright". Smithsonian. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
  6. ^ Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors (1990), p. 221.
  7. ^ Emmeline Pankhurst bust by Alice Morgan Wright, Sewall-Belmont House and Museum website
  8. ^ The Woman's Journal (Public domain ed.). Woman Citizen Corporation. 1921. pp. 159–.
  9. ^ Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors (1990), p. 221.
  10. ^ Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Sculptors (1990), p. 222.
  11. ^ "Goode and Wright: Protecting Animals Was a Life and Death Decision". Humane Society. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
  12. ^ Albany Institute, plate 55

References

  • Albany Institute of History and Art. "200 Years of Collecting." 1998.
  • Fahlman, Betsy. "Sculpture and Suffrage: The Art and Life of Alice Morgan Wright (1881-1975) : Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Albany Institute of History and Art, April 21-June 11, 1978." 1978.
  • "Goode and Wright..." [1]
  • Prieto, Laura R. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. 2001.
  • Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Sculptors. 1990.
  •  This article incorporates text from The Woman's Journal, by Woman Citizen Corporation, a publication from 1921, now in the public domain in the United States.
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