Polly

“Greenville County Museum of Art is submitting a photo of our bronze sculpture by Myra Musselman-Carr (1871-1929) entitled "Sketch for a Suffrage Monument". It would be remarkable to see the artist's suffrage artwork conceived in the early 1900s come to fruition. Myra Musselman-Carr (1871–1929) is an interesting but relatively little-known American sculptor who deserves more attention, particularly because she was connected to some of the most important developments in early American modernism. She was born November 27, 1871, in Georgetown, Kentucky, and later worked in Lexington before moving to New York. She studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the Art Students League of New York, and continued her training in Paris with the influential French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. Probably the most significant fact about Musselman-Carr is that she was included in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show. The exhibition introduced large numbers of American viewers to European modernism and included artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Cézanne and Brancusi alongside American artists. She was both an artist and a teacher, and she was participating in modernist circles at a moment when women had considerably fewer opportunities to establish lasting reputations in sculpture. "Sketch for a Suffrage Monument," 1911, bronze, 20 × 14 × 18 inches was created nine years before ratification of the 19th Amendment and during a period of rapidly expanding organized suffrage activity in the United States. The title indicates that Musselman-Carr conceived the bronze as a sketch—very likely a model or proposal for a larger commemorative sculpture.”