Constance Ortmayer
American sculptor and medallist
Constance Ortmayer (July 19, 1902 – May 15, 1988) was an American artist well known for designing the 1936 Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar. Ortmayer was inspired to become an artist by her father, Rudolph Ortmayer, who worked as a lithographer. In 1926, Ortmayer began studying under Austrian born sculptor Franz Plunder. She graduated from the Royal Academy in Vienna, Austria and studied Master School of the Royal Academy. Upon returning to the United States in 1932, Ortmayer found difficulty gaining employment. With the assistance of her friend, a tutor of Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. Ortmayer became employed with the Section of Painting and Sculpture, coordinating design contests for federal buildings. In 1937, she ended her employment with the Section. Soon after, she was recruited as a sculpture instructor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, by the current president, Hamilton Holt.
Ortmayer was awarded commissions to design and create two bas reliefs for post offices in Arcadia, Florida, and Scottsboro, Alabama, as a result of her entering a national design competition.
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This entry incorporates text from “Constance Ortmayer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.