Alice Morgan Wright, activism, censorship, sculpturE

March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.

One hundred years ago today … Alice Morgan Wright’s “Wind Figure,”  was one of the highlights of the Independent Artists’ Exhibition at the Waldorf, running through April 2.

Wright, aside from being a sculptor, was “known for her leadership in the women’s suffrage movement and for her promotion of animal rights” (Smithsonian). Her lifelong companion and partner in her activist work was Edith J. Goode; the two would certainly be labelled gay by contemporary notions (Clifton). 

“The Wind” demonstrates the avant-garde influence on her work. She was one of the few US artists interested in abstract sculpture at the time. 

In a review of the exhibit published on this day, one hundred years ago, Hamilton Easter Field wrote: 

The sculpture as a whole is disappointing, save for the work of Nessa Cohen. Alice Morgan Wright, H. M. Linding, Trygve Hammer, Texie Myers and Mrs. H. P. Whitney. Much of the sculpture does not look like hand work, but as if it had been cut by some machine. It does not show man's struggle with his materials.

“At the Independent,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 March 1922, p.41. 

That said, the critic seemed to have his own ax to grind, so to speak. Reporting on the Exhibition’s opening on March 11, the Times described Field:

Hamilton Easter Field, erstwhile of the -Directors, and whom the Independents accuse of bringing discord into their happy midst and who stirred things up so on the eve of their exhibition that he felt it incumbent to resign, was also among those present. Mr. Field was, in fact, among those present twice in one day, and was reported to have said that he really had no hard feeling toward the Independents and had made a St. Patrick's Day resolution never to say harsh things about them again, no matter what he might think. Several of the Independents, however, said they had not yet made resolutions of forgiveness.

(“ ‘INDEPENDENT' ART DRAWS HUGE CROWD,” New York Times, 12 March 1922, p.33.) 

Note: We featured this exhibition, organized by the Society of Independent Artists, in our February 23 post about painter Cecil Gaylord.

Wright was also one of the Board of Directors of the Society. In this role, One hundred years and two days ago, she met with her fellows to discuss a dire situation: The manager of the Waldorf had taken down six of the exhibition’s paintings as being obscene.

[I]t was discovered at the Waldorf Roof that five pictures including one of the largest, and certainly the heaviest, in the show, had disappeared from the gallery walls. All the canvases removed were of nudes. Careful investigation revealed that the censor had been active once more. After six long years of untrammeled showing of their worst and their best the Society of Independent Artists had encountered censorship for the first time. The greatest regret expressed yesterday by such members of the society and of the board of directors as could be seen was that no more really worthy objects had attracted the censor's wrath. In exhibitions past they remembered canvases that might without too great a stretch of the imagination have seemed improper, but the six nudes singled out for condemnation Saturday were, it was felt, for the most part particularly harmless.

The censor, it appears, is in this case no other than the manager or the Waldorf, Augustus Nalli. The management of the Waldorf sent a written notice on Saturday to the Independents' directors stating that unless certain pictures were removed from the exhibition the premises would be closed at once. The offending pictures were, as it developed six: "Just Joseph," by Charles Feldman "Summer," by Emile Ganso: "Reclining Nude," hy Octavine Long: "A Primitiv Tioman," by Frances L. Tompkins "Young Negro," by Jean Paul Slusser and "Drawings." by A. Walkowitz, one of the directors of the society.

(“Nudes Have to Go or Art Show End,” New York Herald, 20 March 1922. p.20)

– Jonathan Goldman, March 19, 2022

TAGS: women artist, lgbtq, queer history, censorship, obscenity, animals, suffrage, activism, art, sculpture