The Museum’s Nude

For four decades, a large plaster statue of a nude woman greeted visitors to the Pink Palace Museum. The sculpture was created by Memphian Marie Craig. Craig was born in 1908 to Charles “Charlie” and Lillian Craig. Her father worked as the vice president of First National Bank and recalled that his daughter “preferred to mold pretty little things like flowers and figures from…sticky mud” instead of making mud pies. Marie took her first art classes at Central High School before enrolling at the James Lee Memorial Art Academy to continue her studies. She created the plaster “fountain piece” as part of her application to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, which offered her admission and a scholarship. After she was offered admission, Mrs. Burr Chapman, the president of the Art Academy, offered to loan the plaster sculpture to the museum in April 1935. Burton Callicott, the artist who…