The museum is located in Arlington Center’s Jefferson Cutter House
By Laura Grey
The Cyrus Dallin Art Museum features the work of sculptor, educator, Indigenous rights advocate, and long-time Arlingtonian Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861 – 1944). A prolific artist who produced over 260 works, Dallin’s sculptures were popular during his lifetime. He is best known today for his sculptures honoring Indigenous people, and for his heroic-scale statue of Paul Revere astride his horse, located behind Boston’s Old North Church.
The Paul Revere Monument commemorates the famous ride from Boston to Lexington begun on April 18, 1775. That night, Revere rode out of Boston to notify Minutemen that British soldiers were on the march. On his ride, memorialized in Longfellow’s poem, Revere passed through Menotomy (now Arlington), directly in front of the site of the Dallin Museum.
Among Dallin’s sculptures of Indigenous people, his best known is Appeal to the Great Spirit in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This 1908 sculpture features an Indigenous man on horseback, arms outstretched, his face lifted toward the sky.
Appeal to the Great Spirit stands in the courtyard of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The museum is in the Jefferson Cutter House, a Federal-period saltbox house built in 1830. The building also houses the Cutter Gallery Arlington, which highlights local artists, and the Arlington Chamber of Commerce.
The Jefferson Cutter House opens onto Whittemore Park, which honors Captain Samuel Whittemore, Jr., a farmer and soldier wounded in battle on April 19, 1775. Whittemore was 78 when he fought British grenadiers near the park site. He survived his ordeal and lived another 18 years. He is buried a few blocks away in Arlington’s Old Burying Ground.
Across the street is the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway, a 10-mile multi-use trail repurposed from an abandoned railroad right of way. The popular bikeway approximates the route Paul Revere took on his midnight ride.
Cyrus Dallin, Sculptor and Advocate
Childhood in a Pioneer Settlement
Cyrus Dallin was born in Springville, Utah Territory, in 1861, of English immigrant parents. During childhood, he befriended children of the Ute Tribe who lived near the Springville settlement. Dallin’s Ute friends let him ride their horses and taught him archery, at which he excelled. Together they created small sculptures with clay they gathered from local streams.
Throughout his life, Dallin spoke fondly of his friendships with Ute people. He had a deep appreciation of Ute culture and values, and admired their honesty, humor, gentle treatment of children, and love of beauty. Dallin said Ute art was “an expression of the holy things in life.”
Studies in Boston and Paris
In 1880, at age 19, Dallin traveled to Boston and spent a year studying with Truman Bartlett. In 1882, he enhanced his reputation when he entered and won a competition to sculpt a large equestrian statue of Paul Revere.
Dallin moved to Paris to study with prominent sculptors in the late 1880s and again in the late 1890s. In 1891, Dallin married writer and educator Vittoria Colonna Murray, and accepted a commission to sculpt the Angel Moroni for the spire of the Salt Lake City Temple. Though not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints himself, he was a Utahn born of parents who were former members. The angel was erected in 1892. A cast is on display in the Dallin Museum; another stands atop the Boston Temple in Belmont.
In 1897, Dallin returned to Paris with his wife and first son. He continued his studies, and entered sculptures of Indigenous people in the Paris Salon, earning honors.
A Successful Life in Arlington
On his return to Boston, Dallin brought a burnished reputation and polished skills. From 1899 to 1941, he taught at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). An affable man, Dallin befriended artists including sculptor Daniel Chester French and portraitist John Singer Sargent.
In 1899, Dallin bought a house in Arlington Heights (now the Taylor-Dallin House), where he and his wife raised three sons. The studio he built there burned down in 1945, but the house stands today as a private residence.
An Iconic Statue 57 Years in the Making
Cyrus Dallin sculpting one of seven versions of his statue of Paul Revere
In 1882, Dallin—then 22—entered and ultimately won a competition to create a statue of Paul Revere to stand in Boston, despite competing against established sculptors Daniel Chester and Thomas Ball. His youth and inexperience made the selection committee nervous, but after submitting two revised models, his third was approved in 1884.
Dallin signed a contract for $25,000, but the mayor didn’t sign it, and the next mayor wouldn’t raise the required funds. When Dallin’s former teacher criticized his sculpture and inexperience, the committee shelved the project.
Despite this setback, Dallin went to Paris to study, making a name for himself there. When he returned to Boston, he learned his third Revere model had been lost. He created a fourth, and ten years later, a fifth. This 1899 model, a cast of which is in the Dallin Museum, inspired Boston’s mayor to renew Dallin’s contract, but funding efforts failed.
In 1930, he created a sixth version. His plaster prototype (treated to look like bronze) joined the Dallin Museum in 2024, and for the first time can be viewed alongside the 1899 model. By 1935, Dallin, then in his seventies, created his seventh model, a full-sized rendering using three tons of clay. In 1936, it received approval; in 1940, it was cast in bronze.
The statue was erected in September 1940. For the statue, Dallin earned only $2,500 more than he’d been promised 57 years earlier. Sadly, Dallin’s son Arthur had been killed fighting for France in World War II shortly before. Despite Dallin’s achievement, he was noticeably somber in the wake of his great loss.
Dallin’s 5th model (left) from 1899, and his 6th model (right) from 1930, at the Dallin Museum
Advocacy of Indigenous Rights
During Dallin’s last 30 years, he fought ardently against subjugation of Indigenous people. He worked alongside them to influence U.S. law and change white attitudes.
Dallin served as president of the Massachusetts branch of the Eastern Association on Indian Affairs, partnering with allies and leaders of Indigenous Nations in the Southwest. Their work led to passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the centerpiece of the “Indian New Deal.” Dallin worked with these groups to establish the Indian Arts and Crafts Board in 1935. Dallin also served on the board of the Indigenous-led Algonquin Indian Council of New England. He supported their cultural reclamation efforts and kept Tribal leaders abreast of federal policy developments that impacted their communities in the Northeast.
Portraits of Indigenous Leaders
Cyrus Dallin and Navajo visitors stand before his sculpture of the Massasoit Ousamequin in Plymouth, MA
Dallin sculpted Indigenous people throughout his career. In 1921, he sculpted Massasoit Ousamequin, the leader of the Wampanoag confederacy who built an alliance with Plymouth Colony settlers that saved the colony from failure in the 1620s. In the 1920s and 1930s, he created busts of icons of Indigenous resistance, including Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull, Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo, and Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph. Dallin’s portrait bust of Zitkála–Šá (a.k.a. Red Bird) of the Yankton Dakota Sioux celebrates this important Indigenous rights activist. The Dallin Museum displays a statuette of Red Bird astride a horse with her child.
Today we recognize the frustration many Native people feel when their stories are told primarily through white interpreters such as Cyrus Dallin. The dearth of Indigenous voices in the public space makes including their opinions and scholarship especially important to the Dallin Museum.
Depictions of Indigenous People in Arlington
Dallin’s Menotomy Hunter in Robbins Memorial Garden behind Arlington’s Robbins Library
The 1911 sculpture Menotomy Hunter kneels above a waterfall in the Winfield Robbins Memorial Garden behind Arlington’s Robbins Library. Bow and arrows in hand, the hunter dips his hand into a stream. On the same block is the 1913 Robbins Memorial Flagstaff by Town Hall. Its flagpole finial sculpture is a woman representing American agriculture. The finial is a reproduction; the original is in the Dallin Museum.
The base includes a Pilgrim mother and child, a Minuteman, a Pilgrim man reading a Bible, and the 17th century Massachusett leader known as the “Woman Leader of Mistick,” who relinquished her ancestral land to settlers in an effort to ensure the survival of her people.
An Artist Ahead of His Time
Though Dallin was not Indigenous, he was progressive for his time, and an ally to Tribal members. He worked alongside Native and non-Native colleagues to fight for equity and justice. He is today remembered for his compassion and dedication to advancing the rights of the Indigenous people of North America.
Dallin was outspoken in correcting misconceptions about Indigenous people. In 1921, the Lowell Sun described Dallin’s “startling arraignment of white complacency and self-righteousness” in which he called out anti-Indigenous racism. He said, “We have dishonored ourselves, distorted the facts, and turned the Indian from a friend to a foe.”
Cyrus Dallin died in 1944 at age 82. He, his wife Vittoria, and their son Lawrence Dallin are buried near the Dallin Museum in Arlington’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
The Troubling History of the Land on Which We Stand
The Dallin Museum acknowledges our site’s history as the unceded ancestral land of the Massachusett Tribe. We thank Elizabeth Solomon, Massachusett Tribal Elder, for allowing us to display her words, reproduced below, in the Dallin Museum.
Whose Land Are You On?
You are in Native space and on the traditional lands of the Massachusett Tribe.
Ten thousand years ago Boston Harbor was dry land, and we were here. One thousand years ago much of the land we all live on was underwater, and we were here. Four hundred years ago colonists came to occupy our land, and we were here. Today most of greater Boston is a major urban area occupied by many others and, still, we are here. We belong to this place, and this place is an inseparable part of us.
Today, people from many cultures live in Arlington and many others visit. Some are Massachusett, some are descendants of other Native peoples, and some come from other parts of the world. As you tour this museum, always remember that you are on the lands of the Massachusett Tribe and know that, wherever you go in the Americas, you are in Native space.
- Elizabeth Solomon, Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, Elder and Member of the Massachusett Ponkapoag Tribal Council
The Jefferson Cutter House, Home of the Dallin Museum
In 1803, Jefferson Cutter was born in West Cambridge (now part of Arlington). Since the mid-17th century, Cutters had operated wood mills along Mill Brook, which runs between Great Meadows in Lexington and Lower Mystic Lake in Arlington. Cutter, a mill operator, woodturner, and millwright, built the house, and likely did the decorative carving around the front doorway in the 1830s, shortly after the house was built. The house is one of the last surviving saltbox houses in Arlington.
In 1989, the Federal saltbox-style Cutter House was donated to the town by the owners of Mirak Chevrolet, on whose land the house sat. The house was rolled 1.2 miles down Massachusetts Avenue to its current location.
Take a Free Self-Guided Tour of Arlington’s Cultural District
The Dallin Museum and Whittemore Park are in the heart of Arlington’s Cultural District. Visitors to town are invited to enjoy historian Ed Gordon’s self-guided Cultural District Audio Tour, which provides an engaging narrative that illuminates Arlington’s history.
Article written by Laura Grey
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