“A Woman Sculptor among the Primitive Races”: Gender and Sculpture in the 1930s

Abstract

On Jun 6, 1933, the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History opened a new exhibit, the Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall of the Races of Mankind. Comprised of almost one hundred objects and representing over eighty different racial types from Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, and the Pacific Islands, the Races of Mankind far exceeded the scope of previous and contemporary racial exhibits. The Hall of the Races of Mankind was the most extensive use of free-standing sculpture ever mounted in a natural history museum -- and remains a singular episode in the history of sculpture as well as in the history of museum exhibitions on race. The museum's guidebook on the Races of Mankind assured its visitors that Malvina Hoffman had succeeded in this difficult task, producing works that were scientific documents as well as works of art and an amalgam both of beauty and of truth.