Sculptresses

A venerable institution little known to the U. S. public is the American Academy of Arts & Letters in Manhattan. Last week members and their guests assembled to hear an oration from President Nicholas Murray Butler honoring the centenary, of Charter Member Thomas Bailey Aldrich, an organ recital, more speeches by amiable Critic William Lyon Phelps and ruby-nosed retired Editor Robert ("Droch") Bridges of Scribner's Magazine. Then one and all adjourned to view a collection of 170 sculptures by the only ; female sculptor in the Academy, capable, unassuming Anna Hyatt Huntmgton, 60.

One of the wealthiest of women artists, Sculptress Huntington is the wife of learned Hispanophile Archer Milton Huntington, son of oldtime Railroad Promoter Collis Potter Huntington. Always shy of publicity, Sculptress Huntington worked first with Sculptors Gutzon Borglum and H. A. McNeil. She has always been an animal sculptor by choice, but three human subjects have also occupied her. Every bus rider on Manhattan's Riverside Drive knows Mrs. Huntington's equestrian statue of Joan of Arc. There are other Huntington Joans in Manhattan's Cathedral of St. John the Divine; at Gloucester, Mass.; San Francisco and Blois, France. Dianas Mrs. Huntington has left in Cambridge Mass.; Austin, Texas; New Orleans and Biois. El Cid, medieval Spanish conqueror of the Moors, Mrs. Huntington has immortalized for Seville, Spain: San Diego, Calif.; San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

Indirectly another even richer woman sculptor was important in last week's art news. Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, resting from her own labors since her exhibition at the Knoedler Galleries eight months ago, opened the Third Biennial Exhibition of U. S. artists at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

One hundred and twenty-three paintings and statues by 123 U. S. artists, submitted by invitation only, went up on the Museum's walls. Present was practically every well-known name in modern U. S. painting, with the possible exception of Thomas Benton. Perhaps he had nothing ready to show. Differing from most mass art shows, the Whitney Biennial has no jury, offers no prizes, but the Whitney offers far more practical rewards by buying from its large endowment a great many more pictures from each Biennial than it ever expects to hang permanently on its walls. Critics rooted loudest last week for a portrait of a pert chorus blonde in a plumed shako by Walt Kuhn, who started his artistic career drawing comic pictures for the humorous weeklies, has become one of the ablest painters in the U. S.

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