In the 19th century, a sculptor rose to fame and created one of the most iconic landmarks in New York, then all but vanished from the art historical record.

A major success in both New York and Europe and the recipient of significant public commissions, Emma Stebbins was a widely acclaimed artist in her lifetime, though that hasn’t translated into a comparable legacy. Her name endured obscurity for roughly a century. Now, at the Hecksher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, the exhibition “Emma Stebbins: Carving out History” revisits the artist’s pioneering career and reasserts her position as the influential figure she was. Curated by chief curator Karli Wurzelbacher, the exhibition is the product of five years of continuous research.

The museum boasts the largest collection of the artist’s work, including a duo of sculptures commissioned by the uncle of Heckscher Museum founder August Heckscher, Charles Heckscher, reflecting the institution’s longstanding commitment to the artist.

Emma Stebbins, detail of Angel of the Waters (1873). Courtesy of the Heckscher Museum of Art.

A substantial focus of the show is dedicated to the cultural impact of Stebbins’s most famous work: the Bethesda Fountain, situated on the Bethesda Terrace at the end of the Mall in Central Park, which was commissioned in 1863.

Not only a familiar sight to locals and visitors of the city, the fountain has also been featured in films and television shows from Angels in America to Sex and the City. More recently, it was the backdrop of an episode of The Gilded Age, wherein “adventurer” (as Agnes van Rhijn dubs him) Thomas Raikes explains to the show’s heroine Marian Brook that it was the first public commission for a public work given to a woman, installed in 1873, less than a decade before the show is set. Outside of New York, she is also the artist behind the bronze statue of former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Horace Mann outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston, which was cast in 1865.

Installation view of “Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History (2025–26). Courtesy of the Hecksher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.

Notable in Stebbins’s life and career was her long-term relationship with Charlotte Cushman, an internationally famous American stage actress. Cushman was a staunch supporter of Stebins’s career and frequently used her own connections and influence to promote her work. At a time when homosexuality was entirely taboo and in some cases illegal, they openly lived and travelled together, and Stebbins referred to Cushman as her wife.

“Carving Out History” marks a momentous rediscovery of the now-obscure artist, and the threads of Stebbins’s personal life, practice, and career are traced to reilluminate the significance of her work through today.

Henry Inman, Emma Stebbins (ca. 1839–41). Collection of the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.

Sculptress of the Century

Emma Stebbins was born in New York City in 1815 to an affluent family. One of nine children, her father, John L. Stebbins, who was a banker, and her mother, Mary Largin, supported Stebbins’s pursuit of art, as did her brother, Henry G. Stebbins, who suggested she visit Rome to study sculpting.

In 1856, she journeyed to the Italian capital with her mother and one of her sisters and quickly became enmeshed with several fellow artists in the city as well as other Americans living abroad—including Charlotte Cushman. Despite Cushman’s outsized fame at that time, she quickly took an interest in Stebbins and her work. Less than a year after meeting, they took unofficial vows and referred to themselves as married.

After a brief stint back in New York in 1857, the couple returned to Rome in 1858 and toured Europe. Maintaining a lively social calendar, they were known to throw dinner parties and hold breakfasts, and as the show at the Hecksher delves into, fashioned a close-knit circle of fellow artists and writers—many of whom were also lesbians—that served as a supportive community both personally and professionally. Some of those in their orbit included Harriet Hosmer (a former beau of Cushman), Margaret F. Foley, Edmonia Lewis, and John Gibson, to name a few.

Attributed to Silsbee, Case & Co. Photograph Artists, Charlotte Cushman and Emma Stebbins (ca. 1861). Collection of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Cushman was particularly well-positioned to champion Stebbins not only because of her influence as a celebrity, but also through disposition. In the 1981 book Surpassing the Love of Men, historian Lillian Faderman writes, “Emma was assertive as an artist, but shy as a saleswoman. Therefore, Charlotte acted as Emma’s sales agent, a role Emma had hated to play.”

Cushman continually championed Stebbins’s work and played no small role in securing the Horace Mann commission in Boston.

Ultimately, a breast cancer diagnosis Cushman received prompted them to return to the United States, where Stebbins ceased working to fully care for her spouse. Cushman died from pneumonia in 1876, and in the years following her death, Stebbins spent several years composing a biography on her wife, Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life, which was published in 1879.

In 1882, Stebbins succumbed to lung disease and was buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Emma Stebbins, Industry (also known as Miner) (1860). Collection of the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.

A New Slant to Neoclassicism

Stebbins worked largely in the Neoclassical style that emerged in the mid-18th century as a response to the florid, decorative Rococo style. Taking inspiration from classical antiquity, Neoclassicism prioritized balance, idealized forms, and moralistic themes and narratives.

The Bethesda Fountain exemplifies this artistic mode. The winged figure dressed in classical garb, titled Angel of the Waters, takes inspiration from a passage in the Gospel of John which describes the Pool of Bethesda as a place possessing healing powers. An angel would stir the waters, and the first to enter could be healed. In the Gospel, Jesus heals a paralytic man visiting the Pool. Around the base of the fountain stand four cherubs, symbolizing temperance, purity, health, and peace.

The site itself also played a role in the inspiration, as it is where the first pure-water aqueduct in the city had opened in 1842.

Emma Stebbins, Charlotte Cushman (1870). Collection of the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.

While the Bethesda Fountain conveys the traditional elements of the Neoclassical style, and earlier work, The Lotus Eater (1857–60), was radical,  not for its content, but for the artist’s gender. Commissioned by fellow sculptor Gibson, it marked the first male nude made by an American woman artist—and an undertaking she would have been unable to take up had she been in New York. It was also a subject she returned to again in a bust from the museum’s collection. Another first is a bust of Cushman, completed in 1870 and included in the show at the Hecksher. It is considered the first and possibly only period bust by a lesbian artist of their wife.

Within the scope of her career, despite working in the comparatively rigid tradition of Neoclassicism, Stebbins showed an openness to new ideas. Hailing from the Hecksher’s own collection, Industry and Commerce (both 1859) take the visual language of Neoclassicism to depict common laborers and together constitute the first known renderings of American workers in sculpture. Rather than depict characters or figures from mythology, here she transforms a common working-class laborer into the role of allegory—a significantly modern approach for the 19th century.

Emma Stebbins, Commerce (also known as Sailor) (1860). Collection of the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York.

An Important Rediscovery

Erasure of Stebbins began even before she died. There was no mention of her in Cushman’s obituary, reading instead: “never married, but lived and died a virgin queen of the dramatic stage.”

And in Stebbins’s dedication to writing Cushman’s biography, she neglected to leave any comprehensive record of her own life and experiences in her own words. Much of what is known about Stebbins today is drawn from a scrapbook compiled by her sister, Mary Stebbins Garland, comprised of artwork, photos, ephemera, and other biographical materials like letters. The scrapbook and Stebbins’s biography of Cushman together mark a significant moment of women preserving women’s legacies.

The show also resulted in a surprising rediscovery of one of Stebbins’s works. In a walkthrough of the exhibition, Wurzelbacher described how, during intensive research for the show, the team stumbled across a Facebook post from the Belfast Central Library in Northern Ireland that showed Joseph the Dreamer (1864). Depicting the biblical shepherd, the work had never been professionally photographed, and the crook of the figure’s staff was broken. Through inclusion of the show, the sculpture was conserved and documented, adding another rich layer to the artist’s oeuvre.

Emma Stebbins, The Lotus Eater (1863). Collection of the Heckscher Museum of Art.

And this was just one of four works discovered over the course of researching the show that had previously been thought lost, in addition to three more that had been held in private collections for more than a century and not shown publicly, including The Lotus Eater (1863).

Because neoclassicism fell out of favor by the late 19th century, Stebbins’s work fell into obscurity, and her work is now considered exceedingly rare, making rediscoveries like Joseph the Dreamer not only exciting but important to rebuilding the artist’s legacy and conserving the work for generations to come.

The show at the Heckscher Museum of Art marks the first exhibition dedicated to Stebbins, despite her fame in her lifetime. As a woman who achieved career highs comparable—even exceeding—her male counterparts and as an artist who worked within an early, proto-LBGTQ+ community of artists, reappraising and elevating her place within art history has immense value in considerations of art today. Counter to any assumption or belief that women’s and LGBTQ+ success within art is exclusively a product of contemporary times, Stebbins proves the contrary. A lesbian, a woman, and a triumph, whose rediscovery portends new perspectives and interrogations of the art historical canon as it stands today.

“Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History” is on view at the Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Avenue, Huntington, New York, September 28, 2025–March 15, 2026.