Contents

Collection Overview

Biographical Note

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Organization of the Collection

Search Terms

Alice Morgan Wright Papers, 1873-1994

Finding Aid

Indus Chadha

2007

Biographical Note

Alice Morgan Wright, sculptor, suffragist, and animal welfare advocate, the daughter of Henry Romeyn Wright, a prosperous wholesale grocer, and Emma Jane Morgan, was born on October 10, 1881, in Albany, New York. She attended the St. Agnes School in Albany (now the Doane Stuart School) and then graduated from Smith College in 1904.

Wright worked for the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League and began studying sculpture at the Art Student League in New York City. In 1909 the League awarded her both the Gutzon Borglum and the Augustus Saint-Gaudens prizes for her outstanding art work. She went on to study art at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. While in Europe, Wright involved herself in both the British and French suffrage movements. She organized a meeting in Paris at which English suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst spoke in 1910 and arranged for Pankhurst to make an appearance in Albany during her tour of the United States in 1911.

During a suffrage demonstration, Wright was arrested and spent two months in London's Holloway Gaol. During this time she modeled a small bust of Emmeline Pankhurst, her prison-mate, with art supplies she had smuggled into the prison. When she returned to Paris she organized a petition drive demanding the release of jailed British suffragists. By 1913 Wright's art work had won several prizes, and had been exhibited in New York, Paris, and London. After returning home in 1914, she became the recording secretary of the New York State Women's Suffrage Party, and only returned full time to her sculpture after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Wright's lifelong companion was Edith J. Goode, whom she met at Smith, and together they worked tirelessly for peace and justice. Wright's love of animals increasingly drew her to the cause of animal protection, and although she was heralded as one of the leading young American sculptors, art increasingly took a backseat to her reform activities. By 1945 she was devoting all her time to the cause, founding the National Humane Education Association, and working with various other animal protection organizations. Russell Sage College awarded her an honorary degree in 1947. Wright died in Albany at the age of 93, on April 8, 1975.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Alice Morgan Wright Papers include biographical material, correspondence, writings, postcards, scrapbooks, artwork and photographs of her work as a sculptor; subject files, and memorabilia. Wright's career as a sculptor and her activism are well-documented; personal material is more fragmentary. Topics include art, women's suffrage, women's rights, women companions, birth control, world peace, animal welfare, the International Police Force and the United Nations, and Navajo Indians. Her postcards provide a vivid and interesting account of Wright's travels, especially her years as an art student in Paris. Also included are reminiscences of the Pankhursts and of Wright's confinement in Holloway Gaol where she spent two months after her arrest at a suffrage demonstration in England.

Notable correspondents include Florence E. Allen, Emily Greene Balch, Mary Ellen Chase, Helen Keller, Stella Newsome, Ada Comstock Notestein, Emmeline Pankhurst, Alice Paul, Emmeline Pethink-Lawrence, Adlai S. Stevenson, Elisabeth Telling, Mary E. Woolley, Edith J. Goode (Wright's lifelong partner), and her mother, Emma Morgan Wright.

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Search Terms

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into six series:

• SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS (1873-1990)
• SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE (1909-78)
• SERIES III. SCRAPBOOKS (1903-75)
• SERIES IV. ARTWORK (1907-78)
• SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES (1912-94)
• SERIES VI. PHOTOGRAPHS (1893-1970s)
• OVERSIZE MATERIALS

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SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS (1873-1990)

This series contains articles, clippings, and notes by and about Wright. It also contains her telephone and address books. Materials pertaining to her education at Smith College, such as notebooks, sketchbooks, correspondence and the Ivy Oration by Wright, are also included. Awards and citations, including the honorary degree she received from Russell Sage College in 1947, speeches, memorabilia, and miscellaneous family material are contained in this series. Also present are her obituaries, her will, and the instructions to its executors.

SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE (1909-78)

Correspondence includes letters from Florence E. Allen, Emily Greene Balch, Mary Ellen Chase, Helen Keller, Stella Newsome, Ada Comstock Notestein, Emmeline Pankhurst, Alice Paul, Emmeline Pethink-Lawrence, Adlai S. Stevenson, Elisabeth Telling, and Mary E. Woolley. Postcards provide a vivid and interesting account of Wright's travels, especially her years as an art student in Paris, and include correspondence between Edith J. Goode, Wright's lifelong partner, and her mother, Emma Morgan Wright.

SERIES III. SCRAPBOOKS (1903-75)

Wright's scrapbooks contain clippings pertaining to subjects that were of great interest to her. The Whiteface Mountain scrapbook focuses on current affairs. She devoted one scrapbook entirely to art clippings (1903-75, n.d.) and another to theatre programs and pictures (1904, n.d.). This series also includes a scrapbook entitled "For Alice Morgan Wright - A Friend of Pussy-Cats" (n.d.) containing animal pictures and poems that was probably compiled by a friend and gifted to Wright.

SERIES IV. ARTWORK (1907-78)

This series contains Wrights artwork and related materials. It also includes the Mary Augusta Jordan medal presented to Wright; two metal plates for the L. Clarke Seelye bas relief done by her; various sketches and drawings - including those done for greeting cards for the National Humane Education Society; and the bookplate done for the Anna Cutler Fund, Smith College Library. The series also contains verse by Wright, clippings and writings about her artwork, exhibit catalogues and materials, and original artwork by others, including works by Shirley Thomson.

SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES (1912-94)

The subject files, like Wright's scrapbooks, contain materials pertaining to subjects that were of interest to her and with which she was actively involved. This series includes materials regarding animal protection; birth control; women's rights; the International Police Force and the United Nations; Navajo Indians; and Suffrage, including memorabilia, such as a knife and a hunger strike medal, of the time Wright spent in confinement in Holloway Gaol after her arrest at a suffrage demonstration in England.

SERIES VI. PHOTOGRAPHS (1893-1970s)

This series contains portraits of Wright; and photographs of her with friends, animals, and her artwork. There are photographs pertaining to Smith College, including photographs of John M. Greene, and of Wright's classmates. The series also contains a sub series devoted entirely to photographs of Wright's artwork - contact prints of her artwork and studio, bas relief (including the one of L. Clarke Seelye), busts, and sculpture. Another sub series contains various negatives.

OVERSIZE MATERIALS

SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE

SERIES III. SCRAPBOOKS

SERIES IV. ARTWORK

SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES

SERIES VI. PHOTOGRAPHS

OVERSIZE MATERIALS (Flat file)