MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA.- The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts presents Augustus Saint-Gaudens - Master of American Sculpture, through January 2, 2005. Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age is the first United States tour representing almost all of the major projects of the classic American sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The exhibition, which includes full-sized works, reductions, and casts of approximately 100 objects, provides an outstanding retrospective of the work of one of America’s greatest sculptors. The estate known as Aspet was the artist’s haven and studio. With an impressive collection of Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture, Aspet became a National Historic Landmark. The majority of the works in the exhibition will come from Aspet, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

When asked to be part of the advisory committee to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Saint-Gaudens excitedly commented, "Do you realize that this is the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century!" The prospect of artists sharing ideas excited comparison to the Renaissance because, like so many other artists of his day, Saint-Gaudens had been trained in a renaissance model of collaboration at the École des Beaux-Arts. Painters, sculptors, and architects worked together to bring a project to completion. When America began to experience its own cultural "rebirth" in the years after the Civil War, American artists, largely trained in Beaux-Arts methods, collaborated on large civic projects. The public importance of the arts in nineteenth-century America increased the public influence of the artist.