{"id":875743,"date":"2026-10-09T00:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T00:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/875743\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T00:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T00:46:10","slug":"gertrude-vanderbilt-whitneys-cemetery-art-restored-in-the-bronx-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/875743\/","title":{"rendered":"Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney\u2019s cemetery art restored in the Bronx – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bronze sculptures created by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for the Untermyer Memorial are among New York City\u2019s most evocative outdoor works of art. Yet nestled in a corner of the Bronx\u2019s Woodlawn Cemetery, they have largely been overlooked. A recent restoration of the memorial supported by the Untermyer family is bringing new attention to its design by Paul Chalfin, best known for his opulent work at Miami\u2019s Villa Vizcaya<\/a>, as well as to Whitney\u2019s sculptures.<\/p>\n

Whitney, who is herself buried at Woodlawn, had a successful career as a sculptor that is often eclipsed by her patronage and collecting of American art in the early 20th century, particularly her founding of the Whitney Museum of American Art<\/a>. In her creative practice, she was inspired by the expressiveness of Auguste Rodin<\/a>, the bold realism of Modernism and the forms of the ancient world. <\/p>\n

At the Untermyer Memorial, she created three life-size figures that are elevated within a granite structure with metal doors opening on three sides. It marks the entrance to the plot, one of the cemetery\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get this feeling of ascension, because there\u2019s a sloped hillside, there\u2019s a staircase on one side and you see this tower with a mother figure ascending up to the heavens,\u201d Meg Ventrudo, the executive director of the Woodlawn Conservancy, tells The Art Newspaper. <\/p>\n

The meaning of Whitney\u2019s trio of figures is ambiguous. It is sometimes interpreted as representing different stages of a woman\u2019s life or the crossroads of life and the afterlife. One figure turns to gaze down at the viewer, another is on their knees reaching towards the third, who soars upwards with arms lifted.<\/p>\n

The metal doors that hide or reveal this tableau are decorated with flowers on the interior and allegorical scenes on the exterior, like a mother holding her baby and a nude woman and man whose bodies sway together. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful and comforting, but sad at the same time,\u201d Ventrudo says. \u201cTo capture those conflicting emotions is really amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Adrian Untermyer speaks at the restoration\u2019s ribbon-cutting Photo: Johnathan Clemente<\/p>\n

The memorial\u2019s restoration started in 2024 and had its ribbon-cutting on 3 October. Overgrowth that had hidden the side entrance and imposing rough-hewn wall was removed, and new plantings were added to follow the original design, with magnolias, holly and ferns joining century-old survivors like a pair of tulip trees and a large Atlas blue cedar. <\/p>\n

A long, stone whispering bench with paw feet was cleaned, and a bronze fountain adorned with griffins was removed and restored, while the bluestone Star of David it rests upon was entirely rebuilt\u2014having fractured into shards over the years.<\/p>\n

Samuel Untermyer, who was Jewish, was a prominent lawyer whom the press called \u201cHitler\u2019s Bitterest Foe\u201d for his leadership in anti-Nazi Germany boycotts in the 1930s. He had a passion for horticulture that can still be seen in the eclectic gardens at his former estate in Yonkers, New York, which have themselves been undergoing restoration since the formation of the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy<\/a> in 2011. He and his wife, Minnie, were both patrons of the arts, and Samuel commissioned the Woodlawn memorial after Minnie\u2019s death in 1924.<\/p>\n

The Untermyer Memorial succeeded naturalistic portraiture busts and major public monuments such as the Inwood memorial to the First World War, which similarly features the interplay of three figures.<\/p>\n

Whitney was already connected with Chalfin before this collaboration, with the designer working on her Long Island studio. His design for the Untermyer plot has a \u201cU\u201d shape, curving through generations of interred family members, then swooping along the whispering bench and down terraced, grassy stairs. The memorial is still used by the Untermyer family.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that not only is it an attractive place for our family members to rest, but we\u2019re also looking forward to having it be a wonderful greenspace for the people of the Bronx,\u201d says Adrian Untermyer, Samuel\u2019s great-great-grandson and a preservationist central to the restoration partnership between his family and Woodlawn. \u201cYou can have a quiet moment or a joyful moment up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The care for the thousands of monuments at Woodlawn, which include works by leading artists of the 19th to 21st centuries, is always ongoing. Restoration is now underway on an open-air Tiffany Studios mosaic, and a survey is in progress of the cemetery\u2019s stained-glass windows. As Ventrudo says: \u201cWoodlawn is an outdoor museum, and it\u2019s the individuals in our care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bronze sculptures created by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney for the Untermyer Memorial are among New York City\u2019s most evocative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,146462,29877,191588,229,88,368526,2005,1999,13708],"class_list":["post-875743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-bronze","tag-burial","tag-conservation-preservation","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-memorials","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-sculpture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}