150 Public Artworks by League Artists

150 Artworks for 150 Years of the Art Students League

An Essay by Harriet F. Senie

The League has had many famous students and instructors mark the city’s urban spaces with works of public art. This essay highlight some of their many achievements. It is followed by a list of 150 works in chronological order of their fabrication and a map with their locations. Visit as many as possible and find your own surprises and favorites!

AugustusSaint Gaudens’ Admiral Farragut Monument (unveiled 1881) in Madison Square Park was his first public commission. His gold-plated General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument (1902) is located in Grand Army Plaza (Doris C.Freedman Plaza) also in Manhattan at the 60^th Street entrance to Central Park. Daniel Chester French’s seated Alma Mater (1903) is located on the steps ofLowe Library at Columbia University. His Continents (Asia, America, Europe, Africa) are seated at the entrance to the Customs House in Lower Manhattan.

Daniel Chester French’s Richard Morris Hunt Memorial is located along the Fifth Avenue perimeter of the Par at East 70^th Street. Hunt was the architect who introduced the French Beaux-Arts (also called the Second Empire Style) to the United States. Charles Keck’s statue of Francis P. Duffy (unveiled in 1937) located at Broadway and 46^th Street, is now best known as the marker of the site where people go for same day discount theater tickets. Duffy was a military chaplain and a priest in the Times Square area and taught French at what was the then the College of St. Francis Xavier (now a high school).

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Washington-Inwood Memorial (1922) dedicated to World War I is located between Broadway and Saint Nicholas Avenue between 167^th and 168^th Streets. It honors men from three branches of the military who fought in that war. Anna Hyatt Huntington’s El Cid is now in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America. A replica of her 1959 statue of Jose Marti was unveiled in in 2018 on Central Park South, Center Drive, West 59^th Street. Harriet Feigenbaum’s Memorial to Victims of the Injustice of the Holocaust is located on the side of the Appellate Division Courthouse on 25^th Street in Manhattan. At 27 feet high with flames along the length of the column, it is difficult to see from the ground.

Meredith Bergmann’s Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument (2020) located on Literary Walk along The Mall in Central Park is intended to commemorate the centennial of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. It is the first statue in the Park honoring actual women. It is, however, misleading. It conflates primary figures of the Suffrage movement, Anthony and Stanton, with Black Liberation advocate Sojourner. Truth is deserving of an individual monument. Here a standing Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are placed across from each other at a table with a standing Sojourner Truth. However, the women never worked together. Cady Stanton did the writing and Anthony was the spokesperson for the movement. The original submission without the figure of Truth included a scroll of quotes relevant to the suffragette movement.

Not exactly a memorial, Deborah Kass’s OY/YO in a rather sly humorous way acknowledges the different neighborhoods and languages for which New York City is known. OY is a kind of generic lament associated withYiddish while YO means “I am” in Spanish. Initially displayed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, today it can be seen outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History at the corner of 5^th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

There are also better known and loved sculptures whose main audiences are children of all ages. Without a doubt the most popular is Alice in Wonderland(1959) by Jose de Creeft located in Central Park at the Rumsey Playground at East Drive at 72^nd Street. I have never passed it without seeing it covered with children climbing all over it. There is also the added attraction of the nearby pool where you can watch adults and children sail toy boats.

Frederick George Richard Roth’s Mother Goose dedicated in 1938 features a central figure of a witch astride a goose encircled by bas-reliefs of Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole, Little Jack Horner, Mother Hubbard, and Mary with her little lamb. Although popular, it doesn’t allow for much interaction. Roth’s Honey Bear and Dancing Goat (both ca. 1935) are each in a niche in the Central Park Zoo, near 64^th Street and Fifth Avenue. Although they are on a platform that circulates, the animals themselves don’t actually move. Nevertheless they always attract a rapt audience. Another favorite is Roth’s Balto (1925), an Alaskan husky and sled dog, located at on the East Side of Central Park at 67^th Street. I often see children and adults, myself included, stop to pet him.

Over the years the Art Students League has also commissioned a number of abstract works that could be classified as modern art or capital “A” art as it is sometimes called. Alexander Calder’s Le Guichet (1963) located at Lincoln Center Plaza near the Vivian Beaumont Theater. People regularly walk through it on their way to buy tickets to a performance. Louise Nevelson’s Shadows and Flags in downtown Manhattan behind Chase Manhattan Plaza and consists of a group of Cor-ten sculptures painted black. It was officially opened in 1978 and was one of the first plazas in the city to honor an artist and one of the first to honor a woman. Nevelson, then 80 years old, was actively involved with the siting; she chose the precise location.

With so many choices, it is both a challenge and just plain fun to find your own surprises and favorite! Happy Anniversary Art Students League!