Malvina Hoffman in the Balkans

Abstract

This article analyzes the travels of American artist Malvina Hoffman (1885–1966) in Southeastern Europe as a representative of the American Yugo-Slav Relief. Hoffman—famous as a student of sculptors Auguste Rodin and Ivan Meštrović—is best known for roughly a hundred sculptures that she produced for a 1933 exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago titled The Races of Mankind, which played a crucial role in the development of scientific discourses on race in the United States during the interwar period. In later accounts, Hoffman asserted that her interest in racial types developed during her travels in Yugoslavia while overseeing the distribution of American aid to decimated populations of the region in 1919. Based on research in Hoffman’s archive at the Getty Research Institute, this article considers the kinds of representations Hoffman produced of the Balkans and how her encounter with the region informed her work as a sculptor.