The influence of art censorship on New York collectors in the Gilded Age

Abstract

Abstract With ample funds to furnish enormous homes and contribute to new public art museums, New York collectors in the mid-nineteenth century made a variety of choices regarding nudity and sexual themes in the works they purchased. After a surge in art censorship cases, beginning in 1883, collectors increasingly were confronted with polemical rhetoric urging them to refrain from purchasing art representing nude figures. While some collectors clearly adhered to this moralizing advice, including William H. Vanderbilt, James Lenox and Morris K. Jesup, others – most famously Henry O. and Louisine Havemeyer – were spurred on by their advocacy for civil liberties and cosmopolitan sophistication to purchase more nudes. Understanding both the intended and unintended consequences of art censorship campaigns in the Gilded Age is instructive for the likely outcome of analogous debates about appropriate subject matter on display in our own time.