Tibetan Jewel Merchant

Born in New York, Malvina Hoffman worked life-size, sculpted famous personalities, traveled widely, and received major commissions throughout the world. Charged in 1929 by Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History to sculpt 105 large bronzes depicting "The Races of Man," Hoffman traveled around the world (Africa, India, Bali). Our maquette, the Tibetan Jewel Merchant, was Hoffman's first step in her process of creating life-like sculptures.

Three decades later questions would start to be asked about a project that perpetuated in bronzes figures idealized racial stereotypes.