Andrea Geyer’s artist’s book Audrey Munson honors the life of one of New York City’s most famous artist’s models. Audrey Munson, whose likeness can be found throughout Manhattan publicly representing consummate concepts like freedom, purity, peace and truth, ranked among the most sought-after muses for painters and sculptors for the first quarter of the twentieth century. She inspired sculptures like Civic Fame, atop the tower of the Manhattan Municipal Building; America and Europe, located in front of the Custom’s building that today houses the Museum of the American Indian; the Pulitzer Fountain on Grand Army Plaza; and the central figures of the Maine Monument at Columbus Circle. She acted in theater shows and starred in early Hollywood movies.

But Munson did not only pose for artists. She also authored at least twenty articles about her life and work for publication in local newspapers. Geyer’s book is not a biography, but a contextualization of Munson’s life within the larger struggle of women trying to find their voices during their lifetimes and gain fair representation in the records of New York City history.

Audrey Munson, Geyer’s soft-cover, black-and-white, 80-page artist’s book (edition of 500), includes traces that Munson left behind during her lifetime, articles, texts and photographs from Geyer’s research, examples of the celebrated model’s own writing, as well as contributions from the media theorist and writer Cynthia Chris, the New York-based artist Andrea Ray and the Oswego based historian and Audrey Munson specialist Justin D. White.

The book is available for sale at both Art in General (artingeneral.org) and Printed Matter (printedmatter.org).

detailed view of selected pages