Académie Colarossi Art Students League of New York Smith College École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Occupation(s)
Artist, Suffragist, Activist
Partner
Edith J. Goode
Alice Morgan Wright (October 10, 1881 – April 8, 1975) was an American sculptor, suffragist, and animal welfare activist. She was one of the first American artists to embrace Cubism and Futurism.[1]
Early life and education
Alice Morgan Wright Papers. Alice Morgan Wright (seated third from left) with other students and models in art class
Wright came from an old Albany, New York family. She was born October 10, 1881, in Albany, to Henry Romeyn Wright, a prosperous wholesale grocer, and Emma Jane Morgan.[2]
A student at St. Agnes School in Albany (now Doane Stuart School), Wright graduated from Smith College in 1904 and continued her studies, in sculpture, at the Art Students League of New York.[2] The League awarded Wright both the Gutzon Borglum and the Augustus Saint-Gaudens prizes for her outstanding art work.[2]
Prohibited from attending life studies while attending the Art Students League, Wright watched local boxing and wrestling competitions in order to study the human form.[3][4]
"The Fist," perhaps her best known sculpture, shows the modernist influence of Auguste Rodin; other works, like "Medea" (1920), integrated avant-garde Cubist and even Futurist elements. It is likely influenced by the struggle for women's voting rights.[8] Wright also produced more conventional pieces throughout her career. Wright worked slowly and often moved back and forth between a conservative and a more experimental style.[8]
Wright was a member of the National Sculpture Society.[9] She exhibited two pieces, Wind Figure, a stone carving and Young Faun, a bronze statuette, at the Societies 1923 exhibition.[10] Her very abstracted work Medea was shown at the 1929 exhibition.[11]
Betsy Fahlman curated a retrospective exhibit of Wright's work in 1978 at the Albany Institute of History & Art titled Sculpture and Suffrage: The Art and Life of Alice Morgan Wright (1881–1975).[12]
By 1945, Wright had abandoned art in favor of her animal rights activism.[2]
Suffragist
Wright was also an ardent suffragist. She worked for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League.[2] While studying art in Europe, Wright involved herself in both the British and French suffrage movements; notably, Wright organized a meeting in Paris where English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst spoke.[2] Wright also arranged for Pankhurst to make an appearance in Albany during her tour of the United States in 1911.[2]
With the national Women's Social and Political Union, she participated in militant demonstrations in England. She was incarcerated for two months in Holloway Prison, London. With other suffragettes, she protested her treatment by participating in a hunger strike. Wright used uneaten food to create models of her fellow prisoners, using sugar cubes as bases, rather than let it go to waste.[13] She and over 60 other prisoners embroidered their signature on The Suffragette Handkerchief under the noses of the prison guards.[14] Wright also used smuggled plasteline to model a portrait bust of her fellow prisoner, Pankhurst.[15] Wright continued her suffrage activism after her return to the United States in 1914. She was Recording Secretary of the Woman's Suffrage Party of New York during the winning campaign.[16] Wright only returned to sculpture full-time after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.[2] In 1921, she helped to create the League of Women Voters of New York State.[7]
Animal welfare
Wright was an anti-vivisectionist and advocated the humane treatment of animals.[17] In 1920, Wright returned to Albany and gradually turned away from art to focus on animal rights.[18] Wright was a benefactress to the National Humane Education Society; in 1950, with Wright's help, the NHES established its first animal care facility, called the Peace Plantation Animal Sanctuary.[19] Wright also wrote the organization's 12 Guiding Principles, which is still in use.[19] In 1957, Wright lobbied President Eisenhower against using animals in medical testing and scientific research; in 1958, Congress passed the Humane Slaughter Act.[20]
Wright died in Albany at the age of 93, on April 8, 1975.[2] Wright and Goode created the Alice Morgan Wright-Edith Goode Fund, an endowed trust that supports animal welfare organizations.[22]
^Petteys, Chris, “Dictionary of Women Artists: An international dictionary of women artists born before 1900”, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1985 p. 769
^National Sculpture Society, Exhibition of American Sculpture Catalogue, 156th Street of Broadway New York, The National Sculpture Society 1923 p. 250, 348
^National Sculpture Society, Contemporary American Sculpture, The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, San Francisco, The National Sculpture Society 1929 p. 338
This article incorporates text from The Woman's Journal, by Woman Citizen Corporation, a publication from 1921, now in the public domain in the United States.
Bibliography
Albany Institute of History and Art. "200 Years of Collecting." 1998.
Fahlman, Betsy. "Sculpture and Suffrage: The Art and Life of Alice Morgan Wright (1881–1975) : Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Albany Institute of History and Art, April 21 – June 11, 1978." 1978.
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