Miss Genevieve Grant: Modern American Venus
America’s “classical example of feminine loveliness” appeared on the front page of the Duluth Herald on Oct. 26, 1936 — 90 years ago today. Duluth’s own Genevieve Grant had been named “Modern American Venus.” The accompanying page 18 news story also notes Miss Grant is “a blood relative of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Civil war general and later president.”
The competition seems to have been created and perhaps judged by Carl Hallsthammar, a wood sculptor known for producing expressive folk-art figures. The concept was apparently to find a woman whose measurements compare as closely as possible to Venus de Milo and Venus de’ Medici, two classical marble sculptures that represent the same mythological figure — the goddess of love and beauty — known as Aphrodite in Greek mythology and Venus in Roman mythology.
Miss Grant came to Perfect Duluth Day’s attention because her newspaper clippings appear in a collection of scrapbooks that were dumped at the company headquarters.
Below is the full text of the Duluth Herald article, complete with a chart of Miss Grant’s measurements compared to the aforementioned chunks of marble.
