Race experts : sculpture, anthropology, and the American public in Malvina Hoffman's Races of mankind

Resource Information

The work Race experts : sculpture, anthropology, and the American public in Malvina Hoffman's Races of mankind represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Colby College Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Race experts : sculpture, anthropology, and the American public in Malvina Hoffman's Races of mankind

Title remainder

sculpture, anthropology, and the American public in Malvina Hoffman's Races of mankind

Statement of responsibility

Linda Kim

Creator

• Kim, Linda,
• Kim, Linda,

Author

• Kim, Linda,
• Kim, Linda,

Subject

• Art and society
• Art and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Art and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Bronze sculpture, American
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Ethnology -- Social aspects -- United States x History -- 20th century
• Ethnology -- Social aspects -- United States x History -- 20th century
• Ethnology in art
• Ethnology in art
• Ethnology in art
• Figure sculpture, American
• Figure sculpture, American -- 20th century
• Figure sculpture, American -- 20th century
• History
• Hoffman, Malvina, 1887-1966
• Hoffman, Malvina, 1887-1966
• Hoffman, Malvina, 1887-1966
• Hoffman, Malvina, 1887-1966 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Hoffman, Malvina, 1887-1966 -- Criticism and interpretation
• Race in art
• United States
• 1900-1999
• Art and anthropology
• Art and anthropology -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Art and anthropology -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Genre

• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

In 'Race Experts' Linda Kim examines the complicated and ambivalent role played by sculptor Malvina Hoffman in the 'Races of Mankind' series created for the Chicago Field Museum in 1930. Although Hoffman had training in fine arts and was a protege of Auguste Rodin and Ivan Mestrovic, she had no background in anthropology or museum exhibits. She was nonetheless commissioned by the Field Museum to make a series of life-size sculptures for the museum's new racial exhibition, which became the largest exhibit on race ever installed in a museum and one of the largest sculptural commissions ever undertaken by a single artist.0Hoffman's 'Races of Mankind' exhibit was realized as a series of 104 bronzes of racial types from around the world, a unique visual mediation between anthropological expertise and everyday ideas about race in interwar America. Kim explores how the artist brought scientific understandings of race and the everyday racial attitudes of museum visitors together in powerful and productive friction. The exhibition compelled the artist to incorporate not only the expertise of racial science and her own artistic training but also the popular ideas about race that ordinary Americans brought to the museum. Kim situates the 'Races of Mankind' exhibit at the juncture of these different forms of racial expertise and examines how the sculptures represented the messy resolutions between them.0'Race Experts' is a compelling story of ideological contradiction and accommodation within the racial practices of American museums, artists, and audiences

Member of

• Critical studies in the history of anthropology

Cataloging source

DLC

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Critical studies in the history of anthropology