Gutzon Borglum won out over sculptor J.Q.A. Ward, a much older and more established artist and one whom Borglum had clashed with earlier in regard to the National Sculpture Society. At the unveiling of the Sheridan statue, one observer, President Theodore Roosevelt (whom Borglum was later to include in the Mount Rushmore portrait group), declared that it was "first rate"; a critic wrote that "as a sculptor Gutzon Borglum was no longer a rumor, he was a fact." (Smith:see References) Borglum was active in the committee that organized the New York Armory Show of 1913, the birthplace of modernism in American art.
Gutzon Borglum art and music in Boston, New York, and Paris. Her marriage to J. W. Putnam ended in divorce. She taught music in Milwaulkee before moving to San Francisco in 1881, studying art at the School of Design under Virgil Williams and L. P. Latimer, moving to Los Angeles, California in 1884 and the next year began art study with William Keith. In 1885, she met Gutzon Borglum, who was also a student of Keith's. In 1889 in Los Angeles she married Borglum who was her pupil and 19 years younger. The Borglums spent the next ten years traveling widely, studying