Museum Practice: Confronting the Past

Malvina Hoffman

In the early 1930s, the Field Museum commissioned sculptor Malvina Hoffman to create bronze sculptures for an exhibition called The Races of Mankind. Hoffman traveled to many parts of the world for an up-close look at the “racial types” her sculptures were meant to portray.

Stanley Field was president of the Museum when he sent a telegram to sculptor Malvina Hoffman to gauge her interest in creating models of “racial types” based on world travels.

Malvina Hoffman specialized in life-size sculptures in bronze, plaster, and marble. Stanley Field, then-director of The Field Museum, commissioned Hoffman to create more than 100 bronze sculptures for The Races of Mankind. Hoffman did not always agree with the Museum’s curators about racial typologies, but was eager to have her sculptures exhibited, and took on the task with passion and dedication.

Born on June 15, 1885 in Brooklyn, Hoffman grew up in an artistic setting. Her father was a piano prodigy who came to America when he was only 15. After Hoffman created her first sculpture, a bust of her father’s head, he looked at her and said, “My child, I'm afraid you are going to be an artist” (Hoffman, 1936).

Hoffman worked for three years in studios in New York and Paris and in locations around the globe, to create the pieces featured in the exhibition. In her letter from the field, arriving with postmarks from countries throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas, she made it clear to curators that while her sculptures were to be used as primarily illustrations of racial type, she also wanted to show the dignity and individuality of her subjects, as well as the beauty of the human form.

Hoffman is pictured on her expedition to India, climbing on top of a royal elephant.
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