Artwork Details
- Title
- Duck Girl
- Artist
- Paul Manship (1885 – 1966)
- Year
- 1911; installed 1916; relocated 1960
- Medium
- Bronze, on limestone base
- Dimensions
- Height 5'1″ (base 2'8″)
Artwork Description
The Duck Girl was first exhibited in 1914 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where it won the Widener Gold Medal.
The Association for Public Art (formerly Fairmount Park Art Association) purchased one of two casts from the artist and installed Duck Girl in Cloverly Park, at Wissahickon Avenue and West School House Lane, in 1916. The sculpture was damaged and moved to storage in 1956, but rescued by the Rittenhouse Square Improvement Association and relocated to the Square in 1960, where it continues to delight the visiting public. Poised in a Greek dress, the figure draws on classical imagery – characteristic of Paul Manship’s earlier works. His later work, Aero Memorial, was installed at Logan Square.
Content on this page was adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, 1992). Bach was the longtime Executive Director of the Association for Public Art, working with the organization from 1980 to 2022.
Artwork Credits
Purchased by Association for Public Art (formerly Fairmount Park Art Association)
Owned by the City of Philadelphia
Artwork Media
Museum Without Walls
Voices:
MAJOR JACKSON is a poet who was born and raised in Philadelphia. His poem “Duck Girl on the Occasion of Spring” was commissioned and performed by Philadelphia’s Concerto Soloists.
DR. SUSAN RATHER is Associate Professor of American Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship.
ROBERT COZZOLINO is the former Senior Curator and Curator of Modern Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Paul Manship studied and exhibited.
Producer: Jenna Weiss-Berman