Jade Walker on the Legacy of Elisabet Ney

The Elisabet Ney Museum

The Elisabet Ney Museum has long stood as a quiet relic of the life and work of its namesake Elisabet Ney. I remember visiting many times throughout elementary and middle school and for class field trips. What I remember the most is that the museum itself never changed, and sat as a reverent — albeit somewhat forgotten — relic of Ney and her story. Recently, however, Jade Walker has taken the helm and is leading the Ney Museum into its next chapter that incorporates contemporary art and artists, education programs, and a revitalization of the historical home and grounds all while keeping the legacy of Elisabet Ney central to its growth. 

It’s a large role that Jade has assumed, but one that she has assumed with all the heart, creativity, and compassion embodied by Elisabet Ney herself.

Leslie Moody Castro (LMC): While you are a visual artist, you also have a history of leading institutions through transitionary moments, the VAC at UT, for example. What inspired you to come back into a leadership role and the Elisabet Ney Museum specifically? 

Jade Walker (JW): I find that at the transition of an institution — either at its inception or at a major shift — is where I am the most inspired and collaborative as a leader. As director of the Visual Arts Center from the onset, I realized what kind of impact can be made with a thoughtful team and a solid foundation, especially when creating inaugural programs and working closely with contemporary artists. The effect of working collaboratively is both long-lasting and crucial in my mind to providing opportunities for artists to help shape an institution’s trajectory. After creating both an outdoor activation and a solo exhibition indoors at the Elisabet Ney Museum, I fell in love with the story of Ney and her advocacy for women artists and immigrants… and her love of nature was icing on the cake! The opportunity to help guide the reimagining of how her story is told is a real privilege, especially as an institution with such a legacy to share. The museum both shapes the arts in our state and beyond and also highlights Austin’s ethos as a place to honor its trailblazers.

Works by Elisabet Ney

LMC: Your position has also come with a major rebranding, new plans for the grounds, and generally, plans to bring the Elisabet Ney into the conversation of current museums in the city of Austin. Can you tell us about this transition, and the catalyst for it? 

JW: Over the last decade, the museum has been in line to undergo a Capital Improvement Project (CIP) funded by the City of Austin, Friends of Elisabet Ney Museum, and the National Trust along with other private donations. After an eight-month public engagement process last year in partnership with expert consultants including Creative Policy along with historians, artists, and advocates, the museum is entering an enormous moment in our history to preserve Formosa, Ney’s property and home to the world’s largest collection of Ney’s artwork, and key historic wilderness elements of the property. In addition, the museum has worked with a consultant, MuseWork, to create a new interpretive plan that will provide a framework for new interpretations of the permanent collection, programs, and an overall rebranding for the museum. The last piece of this puzzle is a rehabilitation plan that is being finalized this winter by Ten Eyck Landscape Architects allowing for increased gathering places, teaching gardens, and attention to the long grass meadow that Ney loved. All of these moves are aimed at sustainability and broadening the experience for visitors to engage with Ney’s life work, artistic process, lived experience, worldview, and the symbolism of her story through a forward-looking lens so that anyone who arrives at the museum will feel welcome and inspired. This is possible by making a historic space like Formosa and the grounds relevant to a new generation and I think Ney would agree that this can happen through the arts and education- both in conversation with a native wild landscape. 

LMC: What are some of the challenges and some of the things you’re most excited about? 

JW: Like other artist home and studio museums, there’s a nuanced approach to ensuring these spaces stay relevant to future audiences while remaining true to the legacy of the artist the museum honors. This challenge is both exciting to me and shifting dramatically right now. It may be that some historic spaces are best preserved in the original state and interpreted in this manner, while others are finding a real shift to sharing the story of their original inhabitant in the form of contemporary artist activations or with programs that invite audiences that were originally left out of the story to be included and welcomed. The City of Austin’s historic museums, including the Old Bakery and Emporium, the Oakwood Chapel, and Brush Square Museums (O’Henry Museum and Susanna Dickinson Museum) are all currently involved in a grant program called Addressing the Silences through the Sites of Conscience funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to help sites dive into the audiences they serve, who are left out of the conversation, and how to make changes in collaboration with a community partner. I am very inspired by the work we are doing on this with our partner, the Refugee Collective.

Busts by Elisabet Ney

The other part of the change we are making at the museum includes placing both artists and community partners into the front seat to advise and share their unique vantage point through programs, exhibitions, and annual community engagement initiatives, allowing artists to get to know Ney as all of what she was — a skilled artist, a practical businessperson, a savvy marketer, a determined woman, a loving parent, a loyal partner, a grieving mother, and an idealistic dreamer — and then share their own work and lived experience at the museum, helping us all to see ourselves in their place. Within the United States, I admire what other historic artist house museums are doing like the Alice Austen House and Thomas Cole National Historic Site to push the envelope with artist activations within the museum walls and in the landscape. These historic sites and many others are changing the way we see house museums. In fact, our museum is honored to be a part of the National Trust’s Historical Artists’ Homes and Studios program along with these sites and others including the beloved La Mansana de Chinati, overseen by the Judd Foundation — as places to really hone in on the full picture of an artist and their work’s impact on society.

LMC: The Ney is the former home and studio of artist Elisabet Ney, and is what I like to call the grandmother of all Austin museums. Can you tell us about the legacy of Elisabet Ney herself?

JW: Let’s expand on this and call it the grandmother (or maybe maverick or catalyst) of not just Austin, but of Texas art museums as well, not to mention the impact she had on Europe. The Elisabet Ney Museum is one of the oldest in the state, second only to the Fort Worth Modern. Ney’s iconoclastic legacy includes her time in Europe sculpting political leaders and revolutionaries in a primarily male-dominated art world, participating in the avante-garde salon culture of 19th century Berlin, her hiatus from making art to raise a family and advocate for arts education (her real passion), an active return to an artist career later in life to sculpt both Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and newly created Texas Capitol building, advocacy for women’s dress reform and suffragist efforts, and finally her ignition of Austin’s art and cultural scene through her salons and community-building efforts. Elisabet was deeply intellectual and a gender non-conformist who transformed lifeless blocks of clay and marble into recognizable and emotionally engaging human likenesses. Working in a Neoclassical style, she skillfully captured the essence of her subjects’ physical features as well as their personalities, giving warmth and life to their static portraits. After graduation from the Munich Academy of Art as one of the first women artists, she secretly married her “best friend,” Edmund Montgomery, a young philosopher and physician. She maintained her name for the sake of her flourishing arts career as she took on large commissions for notable characters like Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, the Italian military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, the composer Richard Wagner, the Prussian-German political figure Otto von Bismarck, King George V of Hanover, and Ludwig II of Bavaria in Munich. Although unclear, there are many possible reasons the couple decided to leave Europe including her involvement in political circles at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Montgomery’s bad health, and their desire to participate in a utopian naturalist’s life in the New World.

A work by Beili Liu installed before a series of Ney sculptures at “Breaking the Mold”

After exploring various options, the two settled in a former cotton plantation to raise their small family in Hempstead, Texas. They tried to establish a school primarily for formerly enslaved individuals and eventually Edmund became an active advisor in the founding of Prairie View A&M, originally called Prairie View Normal School. Elisabet worked hard in Hempstead to start a girl’s school and again when she arrived in Austin to start an art school through the University of Texas. Although she did not succeed, her wish to contribute to education would happen after her death, as her entire collection of artwork was donated to the University of Texas to be used to educate. Ney’s domestic life was an area she repeatedly described as being difficult for many reasons and once her youngest son, Lorne, departed for his education, she returned to her art career and built her studio in Austin — where she became a celebrity and a cultural influencer again, exerting a major influence on the expansion of the arts, education, and the women’s movement in Texas. She died at Formosa in 1907 while working on one of her largest works of art. Ney’s remarkable life story resonates seamlessly with many of today’s larger narratives, including women’s rights, political immigration, prioritizing the natural world, the marginalization of groups, the importance of art and community, and the pursuit of creating “art for humanity’s sake”. I love this recent short film on PBS that speaks to her political involvement in gaining the vote. 

LMC: And to follow up with that, can you tell us about the legacy of the institution and how it has fingers in all our Austin museums? 

JW: I want to start by thanking the many scholars and writers who have helped compile this information regarding Ney’s legacy and the museum in general. Some recent notables include Jacquelyn Delin McDonald, Emily Fourmy Cutrer, Jean Claire van Ryzin, Robert Faires, as well as Erin McClelland. In the most tangible way, Elisabet Ney left her artistic mark on some of our most notable public institutions in the United States and Texas: the United States Capitol, the Texas Capitol, and the Texas State Cemetery. Her statues of prominent Texas figures played a role in defining and elevating the state’s reputation on the national stage. It is remarkable to note that she is still the only female sculptor representing a state with two unique works (Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston) in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. I love this interview done by  Architect at the Capitol with one of the top Ney scholars, Jacquelyn Delin McDonald about Ney’s commitment to the dress reform movement.

In a more abstract sense, she shaped Texas’ and Austin’s arts scenes as a catalyst and arts advocate. The salons she hosted at Formosa became the basis for the formation of the Texas Fine Arts Association, the first organization to promote the arts in Texas, and later were founders of the Elisabet Ney Museum. This group was mostly made up of women arts and culture advocates including Laura Driskill and Julia Pease. By 1941, the City of Austin was entrusted with the Elisabet Ney Museum as the Texas Fine Arts Association moved to Laguna Gloria (another generous offering to the arts scene for Austin by the fine lady Clara Driscoll), later the Laguna Gloria Art Museum — and now The Contemporary Austin.

And, perhaps most significantly, as a determined woman artist who persistently, and successfully, pursued commissions in a male-dominated landscape, Elisabet Ney undoubtedly broke down barriers for future women artists! Over the last 113 years, the museum, through forward-thinking programming and engagement, has been a place for larger narratives around women’s rights and dress reform, political immigration, naturalist aesthetics, and a commitment to education, enlightenment, and artmaking, while honoring those who see themselves in Ney’s story as a pioneer and iconoclast.

A work by Tammie Rubin from “Breaking the Mold”

LMC: You have an exhibition by three respected female artists in Austin on display now. The building itself hasn’t hosted a contemporary group exhibition in a long while. What has it been like to prepare for this show and how have the artists handled the challenges of the space along the way? 

JW: We’ve loved the input from so many people over the last two years, which included the idea that the museum could provide more space and resources for local female and female-identifying artists. We’ve taken this message to heart and expanded our previously limited space for contemporary exhibitions. Last year’s Contemporary Art Bash, featuring the work of Lisa B. Woods, Agustina Rodriquez, and Yuliya Lanina plus former exhibitions with artists Renee Lai, Rosa Nussbaum, Annie May Johnston, Alejandra Almuelle, and Deborah Mersky, proved that artists are up for the challenge of being in our historic space and in tune with Elisabet Ney whether it is embedded within the studio or grounds or in dialogue with Ney’s life, legacy or artwork. I’ve loved thinking of how this not only allows the museum to serve an artist population but also grows the story and the translation of our namesake. The dream team for Breaking the Mold, Beili Liu, Tammie Rubin, and Virginia L Montgomery (VLM) have not only embraced the intent of the exhibition but have also been flexible and creative enough to oversee the bigger project, which is to create educational art crates that will be going into 4th-grade classrooms in 2025.

LMC: Why did you choose these artists to work with for this exhibition in particular? 

JW: These three artists each spoke in some form to themes that have emerged as being central to the legacy of Ney and her work — her love of the natural world, the process of how she made her work, and her life as an immigrant moving across the ocean and then-country. I am also a chronic matchmaker and although many times I envision solo exhibitions from artists, the threads that run through these three artists’ work are palpable… process, materials, multiples, natural elements, advocacy for untold stories… the list goes on. 

As I mentioned, this project is larger than just a group exhibition. The artists were asked to collaborate with the museum to create a new annual educational initiative, “Breaking the Mold: Mobile Hands-On Art Crates.” The program was conceived of by our amazing Culture and Arts Education Coordinator at the museum, Lindsay Barras, and funded in part by a grant from the Dorothy C. Radgowski Learning Through Women’s Achievement in the Arts Grant Program, provided through the Where Women Made History and the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios programs of the National Trust for Historic Preservation along with support from the Summerlee Foundation.

Each unique portable classroom art crate will be designed and fabricated by the artists to tell Ney’s story through their own work, bridging the gap of over a hundred years. Each artist started with a beautifully crafted art crate fabricated by Alison Heinemeier at Kingsbury Museum Crating much like the crates Ney would have accompanied across the ocean to reach Carrara, Italy — her chosen source of marble. The finished product will serve as a kind of vessel, artwork, and tool to engage Austin elementary school students in the areas of art, history, science, and math, encouraging critical thinking and introducing the creative process. What we love about this program is the way it will reinforce Ney’s vision for women in the arts while advocating for youth educational initiatives. The program consists of three crates to select from: Art through Portraiture: Science and Technology in the 19th Century, Women on The Frontier: Elisabet Ney’s Artistic Perspective on Texas History and Life as a Naturalist: Elisabet Ney’s Perspective on Art and Science Through Nature. Each art crate will contain lesson plans, didactic materials, educational activities, and materials for object-centered learning.

It has been amazing to see how each artist not only experiences the work of Ney in conversation with their own work but also how they’ve worked with our own team, including designer Florentino Diaz and arts education consultant Abby Mechling to visualize the transformation of these themes into educational moments. We are still in the thick of this project, so I know I will have more to say as the team completes the crates, we consult with our local teachers, and then see the effect in the classroom. We could not ask for a better set of artists to be on this journey with!

A work by Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) from “Breaking the Mold”

LMC: What was the inspiration for the curatorial premise of the exhibition? 

JW: Although these artists were selected with the larger art-crate project in mind, I’ve visualized their work based on their material exploration and their bravery to fluidly move between techniques and processes. What I did not expect and have embraced as the real magic behind this exhibition is the connection back to the hand — both literally in the works you see in the museum and in terms of a throughline back to Elisabet. Ney was very interested in perfecting the hand’s re-creation and did many hand studies that live on in the collection today. As we imagine the Elisabet Ney Museum of the future, we have really held tight to the notion that everything Ney touched was changed because of her. Each artist’s featuring, casting, or borrowing the hand as an active object for “Breaking the Mold” has become an energizing force for me as a symbol of strength and resilience.

LMC: Last time we spoke you were starting the research process for a future trip to historical home museums like the Elisabet Ney. What are some of the places you are looking forward to and why? What are some of the things you are looking for when researching different spaces in the states and what do you hope to learn?

JW: I am sure there is a bumper sticker that reads, “I stop for small historic homes and artist studio museums” and it should be on my van these days! My sweet family is so patient as we travel the country making stop after stop. Among the museums I have visited recently, the Jane Addams Hull House Museum,  Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home and studio, T.C. Steele House and Historic Site, and the Gallier House have each offered a perspective on interpretation, accessibility, outreach, collateral, tours, community partnerships, collection preservation, and the list goes on and on. The activism work of Jane Addams was shared through community room spaces to engage and they had a lovely bookshop that was of interest to me. It was also self-guided with very little verbal interaction while Frank Lloyd Wright’s house and the studio could only be accessed through a scripted tour…just like the Gallier House in New Orleans…both were super!  I also loved being on the many acres of the Steele House. This one was interesting too as he had a very active partner, Selma Neubacher Steele, that really helped shape this museum and I wanted to see how the site incorporated this partnership. Each museum works with an interpretive model that suits the mission and space and there is nothing like seeing these in action and in person to get a real sense of the impact. 

I have an ongoing list of important next stops. I hope to visit  Olana, James Castle House, Pasaquan, and the new Cooper Hewitt exhibition, Making Home.