Nancy Cox McCormack Cushman

Nancy Cox McCormack Cushman, internationally recognized sculptor, was born in Nashville August 15, 1885, to Nannie Morgan Cox and Herschel McCullough Cox. After the deaths of her parents, she attended an Arkansas boarding school but soon returned to Nashville, entered Ward Seminary in 1900, and received art training under the direction of Willie Betty Newman. In 1903 she married Mark McCormack in Nashville, but by 1911 their marriage had ended in divorce.

McCormack began her sculptural training in 1909 at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts of Washington University and later at the Chicago Art Institute. Her professional career spanned the years 1911-60. During this time she sculpted the likenesses of some of the most important personalities of her time, including Benito Mussolini, Primo de Rivera, Henry P. Fletcher, Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ezra Pound.

Between study and work in New York and abroad, McCormack completed two Nashville commissions of Doctor Matthew C. McGannon and Edward Ward Carmack. She made a death mask and portrait bust of McGannon, founder of the Women's Hospital, Nashville, in 1920. Between 1922 and 1924, McCormack created the heroic Carmack monument honoring the slain politician and newspaper editor. Erected in 1925, it stands over the Charlotte Avenue entrance to the State Capitol Tunnel.

In 1939 McCormack married Charles Thomas Cushman of New York City but continued to sculpt and tour, living briefly in Sicily, Rome, and Florence. She died in 1967 in Ithaca, New York.