Audrey Marie Munson was an American artist's model and film actress. She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere.
Mother and daughter moved to Washington Heights in New York City, where the 17-year-old Audrey sought a career as an actress and chorus girl. She appeared in a few Broadway shows.
While window-shopping on Fifth Avenue with her mother she was spotted by photographer Felix Benedict Herzog, who asked her to pose for him. Herzog introduced her to his friends in the art world. She posed for a few well-known visual artists, including muralist William de Leftwich Dodge, Isidore Konti, painter Francis Coates Jones, illustrators Harrison Fisher, Archie Gunn, and Charles Dana Gibson, and photographer Arnold Genthe, but she was predominately a sculptors' model. Konti was her first sculptor and her first nude modeling.
Today she is considered "America's First Supermodel." In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Pacific Girl", the "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus." She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere. Munson was also the first American actress to appear fully nude in the film, Inspiration (1915), the first of her four silent films.
On June 8, 1931, Munson's mother petitioned a judge to commit her to a mental asylum. The Oswego County judge ordered Munson be admitted into a psychiatric facility for treatment on her 40th birthday. She remained in the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, New York, where she was treated for depression and schizophrenia for 65 years, until she died at the age of 104.
Daniel Chester French
Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan Bridge
Sculpture
Carl A. Heber,Carrere & Hastings
New York City, New York, Manhattan Bridge Canal St.
Sculpture
NYC Parks Department,Attilio Piccirilli,H. van Buren Magonigle,American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
New York City, New York, Riverside Dr. West 100th Street
Relief
Augustus Lukeman,Art in the Parks - NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
New York City, New York, West 106th Street Broadway
Sculpture
Thomas Hastings,Karl Bitter,Karl H. Gruppe,Orazio Piccirilli,D. Everett Waid
New York City, New York, Fifth Avenue East 59th Street
Fountain
Attilio Piccirilli,H. van Buren Magonigle,Central Park Conservancy
New York City, New York, West 59th Street Columbus Circle
Sculpture
Adolph Alexander Weinman
New York, New York, 1 Centre St
Sculpture
Adolph Alexander Weinman
New York, New York, Pennsylvania Station, 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, New York, NY 10001, USA
Sculpture
Ingalls & Hoffman,Herbert Krapp
New York City, New York, 240 W. 44th St
Performance Space
Karl Bitter
New York City, New York, 27 Madison Avenue
Sculpture
Daniel Chester French,Henry Bacon
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 105 Brattle St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Sculpture