{"product_id":"9781935623380","title":"Beyond Grief: Sculpture and Wonder in the Gilded Age Cemetery","description":"\u003ci\u003eBeyond Grief \u003c\/i\u003eexplores high-style funerary sculptures and their  functions during the turn of the twentieth century. Many scholars have  overlooked these monuments, viewing them as mere oddities, a part of an  individual artist's oeuvre, a detail of a patron's biography, or local  civic cemetery history. This volume considers them in terms of their  wider context and shifting use as objects of consolation, power, and  multisensory mystery and wonder. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArt historian Cynthia Mills  traces the stories of four families who memorialized their losses  through sculpture. Henry Brooks Adams commissioned perhaps the most  famous American cemetery monument of all, the Adams Memorial in  Washington, D.C. The bronze figure was designed by Augustus  Saint-Gaudens, who became the nation’s foremost sculptor. Another  innovative bronze monument featured the Milmore brothers, who had worked  together as sculptors in the Boston area. Artist Frank Duveneck  composed a recumbent portrait of his wife following her early death in  Paris; in Rome, the aging William Wetmore Story made an angel of grief  his last work as a symbol of his sheer desolation after his wife’s  death. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough these incredible monuments Mills explores  questions like: Why did new forms--many of them now produced in bronze  rather than stone and placed in architectural settings--arise just at  this time, and how did they mesh or clash with the sensibilities of  their era? Why was there a gap between the intention of these elite  patrons and artists, whose lives were often intertwined in a closed  circle, and the way some public audiences received them through the  filter of the mass media? \u003ci\u003eBeyond Grief\u003c\/i\u003e traces the monuments'  creation, influence, and reception in the hope that they will help us to  understand the larger story: how survivors used cemetery memorials as a  vehicle to mourn and remember, and how their meaning changed over time.","brand":"Smithsonian Institution Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47132230680816,"sku":"9781935623380","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781935623380_p0.jpg?v=1763657031","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781935623380","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}