Ralph J. Menconi (June 17, 1915 – November 18, 1972) was a prominent sculptor and medallist, who received many accolades during his lifetime. Among them were the Ellen P. Speyer award for original sculpture in 1941, the Freedom Foundation Award, the Michelangelo Award, the American Numismatic Association's Sculptor of the Year award in 1970, and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1971. He also received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, in 1971. He became known as the "Sculptor of Presidents" because of the 36-medal series of the American presidents he created for Presidential Art Medals.
Early life
Menconi was born in Union City, New Jersey, the son of the architectural sculptor Raffaele E. Menconi and Josephine Zampieri Menconi. His father was born in Barga, Italy, a medieval mountain village in Tuscany. The elder Menconi studied in Florence and Carrara, and emigrated to the United States when he was in his late teens. He worked with the leading architects of the day, among them Carrere and Hastings whose classically-inspired buildings were erected in New York and elsewhere. The elder Mr. Menconi sculpted the ornate flagpole bases outside the New York Public Library in Manhattan.
Ralph J. Menconi was raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York and attended the nearby private day school, Scarborough School. At age 18, Menconi began the study of art at the National Academy of Design, New York, later attending Hamilton College. He earned his degree from Yale University, New Haven, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1939. Menconi was awarded a fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation at Laurelton Hall, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, before beginning military service in northern Africa and Europe in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. He attained the rank of major and was awarded a bronze star among other distinctions.
In 1949, Ralph Menconi was admitted to the Municipal Art Society of New York, and was elected a Director of the Society in 1964.
He was honored in 1955 with membership in the Century Association, a group founded in New York in 1847 to recognize persons with accomplishments in the arts and letters. Ralph remained a Centurion until his passing in 1972.
Sculpting
At age 22, as an apprentice to his father, Menconi created a sculpture titled "Mocha" depicting a young goat. The bronze of the subject entered the collection of Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, where it remains to this day. Originally the home of Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington, an accomplished sculptor, Brookgreen Gardens is now a large outdoor sculpture park of works by American sculptors, installed alongside extensive botanical gardens, and is open to the public. Menconi's other three-dimensional works include a statue of Christ at the Cathedral in Nassau, the Bahamas, large busts and fountains on the campuses of Pace University, New York City, and in Pleasantville, New York, and works at Depauw University, Indiana. Beginning in 1951, Menconi and his wife Marjorie Ewen Menconi and their children, Ralph II and Susan, lived in Pleasantville, New York, where Menconi was very active in civic affairs, serving on the village’s Board of Trustees and as Police Commissioner. He attached a studio to his early-American house in Pleasantville as a second workspace to supplement his primary studio in Manhattan. His work also includes extensive Biblical sculpture for the reredos of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Pleasantville.