A New York exhibition pays tribute to a pathbreaking Gilded Age sculptor whose public works have outlived her fame.
Emma Stebbins traveled abroad for years with a famous actress, Charlotte Cushman, whom Stebbins — with remarkable openness for the time — referred to as her “wife.” Cushman, in turn, parlayed her celebrity into success as Stebbins’ business agent. Known primarily for sculpting the neoclassical Bethesda Fountain in New York City’s Central Park, Stebbins also created deeply personal works, including an 1870 bust of Cushman, which features among 14 works on display at Huntington’s Heckscher Museum of Art.
Stebbins also depicted common laborers via the “idealized forms” of classical antiquity — a “significantly modern approach for the 19th century,” Artnet News noted.