Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) First International Conference
San Antonio, TX, Feb. 14-18, 2001

One of the gradual revolutions in 19th-century America was a growing awareness of and exposure to European art. As more and more Americans toured the continent or saw paintings and sculptures in traveling exhibits at home, and as American writers acquired European training, the artisticallyconservative American public increasingly encountered a far less restricted world of visual representation. Most controversial were European or European-influenced depictions of the human body. Expatriate sculptors like Hiram Powers and Horatio Greenough sent back nude or near-nude sculptures that rocked the American art world (Powers's Greek Slave, Greenough's Washington); American tourists abroad marveled or squirmed in galleries lined with undraped Venuses, nymphs, bathers, and slaves.