One of America's foremost sculptors, Malvina Cornell Hoffman (1885-1966) studied with the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin from 1910 until his death in 1917 and is recognized by some as "America's Rodin." Hoffman is perhaps best known for her monumental bronze series, "The Races of Mankind," commissioned in 1930 by Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. Hoffman first won acclaim for her bronze sculpture of Russian dancers Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin and also studied under two other sculptors--Gutzon Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame and Herbert Adams.

Hoffman's commission from the Field Museum sent the sculptor on a round-the-world odyssey that lasted for more than eight months. During her global journey, Hoffman photographed and sketched hundreds of people of different racial and ethnic groups and collected massive amounts of anthropological data. In the end she produced a total of 104 monumental bronze figures, which were first exhibited in 1932 in Paris. The sculptures...