MESSAGE
| DATE | 2006-02-25 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Naked Women among us (in art) - Audrey Munson
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Audrey Munson (New York's "Civic Fame" and "Miss Manhattan," San
Francisco's "World's Fair Girl," and our "Miss America" or "American
Venus")
Audrey Munson photo links:
http://jschumacher.typepad.com/audrey_munson/
http://www.remnantsofadream.com/pages/appendix_6.html
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/civicfame.html
Audrey Munson should be on a postage stamp.
She died in total obscurity in 1996. She becomes eligible ten years
after her death, in 2006. After reading this, write to the mayors of New
York and San Francisco for their support. It is long overdue.
She probably posed for the “Day” and “Night” sculptures of Adolph A.
Weinman, now seen in drawings in the subway of Pennsylvania Station.
Before the current Madison Square Garden and the current Penn Station,
there used to be an old, grand Pennsylvania Station. It was torn down;
the landmark preservation movement was immediately born, if too late .
The “Day” and “Night” sculptures were unceremoniously dumped in New
Jersey landfill. See “Piece of Penn Station’s Past Is Found in Salvage,”
the New York Times, March 25, 1998, pg. B3.
I was researching old issues of the New York Sun from the summer of
1913. One full-page article intrigued me: “All New York Hails ‘Miss
Manhattan.’” It was about a woman named Audrey Munson who had posed for
the statue “Civic Fame” and much else. I checked the personal name index
to the New York Times. What happened to her? When did she die?
“Civic Fame” is the tallest sculpture in Manhattan and the
second-tallest in New York, after the Statue of Liberty. It stands atop
the Municipal Building (by the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall), and was
sculpted by Adolph A. Weinman.
Audrey Munson also posed for “Miss America,” at the Four Continents
Group by Daniel Chester French, in front of the Bowling Green Customs
House.
Audrey Munson also posed for “Peace” on top of the court house on
Madison Square.
Audrey Munson also posed for the proscenium arch of Disney’s New
Amsterdam Theatre.
Audrey Munson also posed for “Beauty” in front of the New York Public
Library.
Audrey Munson is “Pomona,” the lady in the fountain, in front of the
Plaza Hotel at the corner of Central Park.
Audrey Munson is also at the other end of Central Park, at Columbus
Circle, in the Maine Monument.
Audrey Munson posed for Daniel Chester French’s “Memory,” in the
American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. She had posed for 40 pieces
owned by the Met.
Audrey Munson posed for the Fireman’s Memorial on the Upper West Side.
Audrey Munson posed for “Miss Manhattan” and “Miss Brooklyn,” sculptures
originally at the Manhattan Bridge but now outside the Brooklyn Museum
of Art.
In 1915, she posed for so many sculptures for the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition in San Francisco that she was called the
“World’s Fair Girl.” Her “Descending Night” sculpture is often
reproduced.
She went on to star in silent movies. She re-created her story in films
(now lost), and is credited today as the first person to appear nude in
the new medium of cinema.
She allegedly (it cannot be verified with certainty) posed for “Miss
Liberty” on our coinage.
In 1921, she told her life story for several weeks in Hearst Weekly, a
Sunday section of the New York American and other newspapers. She looked
for the “perfect man” to marry. In 1922, she tried to kill herself. And
then—blank.
I looked at the book Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture, by the Art
Commission. “Civic Fame” was on the cover, but the name “Audrey Munson”
appeared nowhere. The book Monuments and Masterpieces incorrectly listed
another model for “Civic Fame.” The Encyclopedia of New York City never
mentioned her.
I wrote to the Art Commission and the Metropolitan Museum and the
Brooklyn Museum. Only the Met responded, and it said that it didn’t know
anything about her and wouldn’t do anything for her. As fate turned out,
they all could have done something because she was, amazingly, still
alive.
Andrew Jacobs, a writer for the New York Times city section, came before
me with his parking tickets at the Manhattan Help Center in February
1996. I said that I didn’t hold it against him that he was a writer for
the New York Times. I told him that I had solved “the Big Apple” and the
Times had never run a story or even talked to me about it in four years.
Further, on Charles Gillett’s death in December, New Yorkers were
falsely told that “the Big Apple” comes from Damon Runyon. C’mon, the
story even made the Post!
He told me, well then, they couldn’t write about “the Big Apple.”
So I said how about this, I’ve got another story, there’s this woman
named Audrey Munson, and she’s on top of this building as “Civic Fame,”
and we just gilted her statues at great expense, but no one knows who
she is, or if she’s alive or dead…
“Rescuing a Heroine From the Clutches of Obscurity” appeared in the New
York Times, city section, April 14, 1996. It was the only article
published on Audrey Munson since 1926, in 70 years. The article
mentioned, in passing, that I’d also solved “the Big Apple.”
I donated my papers and a copy of the article to the National Sculpture
Society. I got a call from a book publisher, and I sent copies of all
the papers there as well. One woman, a photographer, called and said she
was interested in a photo book about Miss Munson. She had contacted me
through the Times. I gave her all my papers and met her and another
woman, a writer. I told them that I didn’t have any book plans at the
moment—I was busy with my father and mother dying, and a full time job,
and this Big Apple Boulevard/Corner catastrophe. However, if they were
interested, they should contact anyone upstate in her home town of
Mexico, NY named “Munson.” I never heard from the two women again.
“That Metropolitan Woman” was a book review in the New York Times of
October 3,1999. Accompanying the review was a photo of a sculpture
identified as Daniel Chester French’s “Brooklyn” that was really
“Manhattan.” The book was American Venus. The authors had gone upstate
and had found a treasure trove of Audrey Munson material. Audrey had
been living in a mental institution for almost seventy years, until her
death in 1996 at age 105. The authors, the review stated, “have made an
extraordinary effort to reclaim long-forgotten facts, newspaper
clippings and vintage photographs of a once -celebrated life.” I wrote a
letter to the editor of the book review that, just three years before,
in the very same newspaper—yeah, my letter wasn’t published.
The book didn’t even give me a single credit.
Miss Munson also posed for the statues in the state capitol at Madison,
Wisconsin; for the Southern Motherhood statue at Columbia, South
Carolina; for a piece at the Vanderbilt Biltmore estate in Asheville,
North Carolina; for a monument at Saratoga, New York, a copy of which I
saw on the stiars in the library of the University of North Carolina;
and much else.
If you’re in New York (the Big Apple), try to see at least one of the
Munson works, and maybe do something to honor her at long last.
...
...
...
...
(“Civic Fame” explanation on nyc.gov. Audrey Munson is never mentioned!
It is mentioned that sculptor Adolph A. Weinman also designed “the
Liberty Dime and the half dollar.” Again, Audrey Munson must be on a
postage stamp, finally as herself.)
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/civicfame.html
Civic Fame was commissioned by the City to celebrate the five boroughs
uniting to become the City of New York. Adolph A. Weinman (1870-1952),
designed the statue, perched atop the tower of the Manhattan Municipal
Building, as well as the relief sculptures on the lower floors of the
building. Weinman’s credits include the Liberty Dime and the half
dollar. The German-born sculptor’s training and style coincided with the
classical traditions exemplified by McKim, Mead and White, the
architectural firm that designed the Municipal Building. Their
collaborations were part of what is known as the American Renaissance; a
movement to integrate all the arts of design as co-equal partners in a
total ensemble of architecture. Civic Fame is a grand figure three times
life size, of gilded copper supported on an iron skeleton. In
construction she is similar to that of the Statue of Liberty, and like
the Statue of Liberty she bears the emblems of her role: A shield with
the coat of arms of the City, a branch of leaves, and “mural” crown—that
is a crown with five crenellations as of a city wall, representing the
five boroughs of the City. Also on the crown are dolphins, symbolizing
New York’s maritime setting.
The 25 foot statue was installed 580’ above the City she celebrates in
March 1913. In 1936, the left arm of the statue fell off and went
through a skylight on the 26th floor of the Municipal Building, which at
that time, was a cafeteria. This prompted the first set of renovations
to the statue. Civic Fame endured three-quarters of a century’s worth of
pollution, high winds, and ice water before needing a major renovation.
In 1991 with restorative work ongoing to the facade of the Municipal
Building, the city seized the opportunity to restore the statue as well.
The French design firm responsible for the restoration of the Statue of
Liberty torch, Les Metalliers Champenois, won the bid to restore Civic
Fame. The cleaning not only revealed the original color and detail, but
also a message from the past: “L. Conroy” carved his initials into the
statue during the 1936 renovation. After 114 days “in the shop” Civic
Fame was ready to go home, and on the Sunday of Columbus Day weekend,
1991, early morning risers were treated to the site of a helicopter
transporting the renovated statue once again to her perch atop the
Municipal Building.
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