Lecture and Book Signing for A Rivalry of Dianas: Saint-Gaudens, MacMonnies, and the Goddess Stripped Bare

Suzanne Hinman Ph.D. Suzanne Hinman’s new Syracuse University Press book The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture in Gilded Age New York examines late-19th-century representations of Diana, Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity. Selected readings will focus on works by both Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Frederick MacMonnies—the one-time master and his studio boy—who in the early 1890s became rivals through their nude sculptures of the goddess. Along with Saint-Gaudens’s famed Madison Square Garden Diana, Hinman will discuss bronze reductions of Diana by MacMonnies and influential French sculptor Jean-Alexandre-Joseph Falguière, both currently on view in the Engles Gallery. A book signing in the Russo Atrium will follow the presentation.