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Part II: Elisabet Ney, Alive and Well in Hyde Park
I n 1907, in the upstairs room of her studio and home at 304 East 44th Street in what is now Hyde Park, Elisabet Ney died of a heart attack, having lived and worked here as a sculptor and advocate for the arts since 1892. This studio, designed and built by Ney and her husband Edmund Montgomery, and named Formosa after the first studio her husband had built her on Madeira in 1863, still stands there at the corner of 44th and Avenue H. Today, the building houses many of Ney's works of sculpture, produced both before and after her immigration to Texas from Westphalia, representing personages as varied as King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Stephen F.Austin, and Lady Macbeth. Established as a memorial to Ney by her friends in 1911, her home and workspace has been maintained as a testament to her life for nearly a century. Further, as one of the oldest historical museums in the Austin area, a building listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the structure that is now the Elisabet Ney Museum is a treasured landmark of Texas history and serves as an active advocate of the preservation the memory of her life and work. |
The effort to preserve Ney's memory was begun by people who knew her
personally and who therefore had some sort of personal, rather than
scholarly or academic, stake in the work of cultural preservation. Ney's
friends were very well organized, and were thus able to create a memorial
to her that continues to mirror her life as she lived it. The arrangement
of objects in the museum, NeyÕs own studio which she designed and built
in several stages, reflects the ways in which she actually worked in the
space. Her sculptures are displayed in the two large rooms of the first
floor, which were in fact her primary workspace. The second and third
floors, which were added later, are empty of her works. The second story
was added on as additional bedroom space, and now contains only a number
of plain wooden tables bought or made by Ney and her husband (plus one
that they acquired by saving Grape Nuts labels). The third floor is
actually only a tiny garret, in a tower designed by Ney to be a study
for her husband, who wrote philosophical tracts. In that room, again,
are none of Ney's works. Rather, there are placards on the walls
displaying quotations from Montgomery's writings. Thus, the arrangement
of objects within the space goes far in demonstrating the use Ney
actually made of the building during her life.
Continued on page 9
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