Jackie Rocha knows firsthand what a good “friends organization” can do with a National Park. In her 15-year tenure at The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Jackie had a central role in helping thousands upon thousands of people explore their family stories and learn about United States immigration history. She also had a key role in developing The Statue of Liberty Museum Founders Registry—a fundraising initiative that helped make the museum a reality. It opened in 2019.

This past winter, Jackie started her tenure as the first full-time executive director of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in Cornish, New Hampshire. With her depth in museum management, dedication to the power of storytelling, and skills and strategies for foundation development and sustainability, Jackie is looking ahead at the Memorial’s second century of celebrating Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s legacy.

Although on a smaller scale than The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, the Memorial has a parallel role—a nonprofit foundation augmenting the park’s work and providing enriching experiences and resources as its founders intended. Unlike the US National Park Service, a friends organization can seek grants and raise funds for its projects.

 

Music and Art

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial underwrites a robust schedule of programming every summer. The Sunday concert series is a local favorite. Eight concerts this summer range from classical and the music of Belize to Mexican violinists, the Villalobos Brothers. Contemporary artists Zenovia Toloudi (the 2024 Saint-Gaudens Fellow) and Sue McNally both have exhibitions there. Concerts and exhibitions are free, except for the park entry fee or membership. Sculptor in residence Davis Fandiño is leading sculpture workshops. The Saint-Gaudens Fellowship, with a monetary grant as well as exhibition, is presented annually to an emerging artist. The 2025 fellow is Sarah Peters.

“Many people assume that because this is a National Park that it is all federal and all funded, but that is not the case,” Jackie says. “I want to ensure our sustainability. My role is to create a more concerted comprehensive development plan. The philanthropic piece is so important for all nonprofits. It’s a combination of the heart and mind,” she says.

 

Learning and Sharing a Legacy

Jackie comes to Saint-Gaudens Memorial with long local ties. From childhood, she came to Sunapee with her family for vacations. After they relocated there, she studied at and graduated from Kearsarge Regional High School. Interested in museum management from a young age, her first job was at Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum.

After her years at The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, she moved into a senior development position with American Ancestors. Wanting to be closer to family in New Hampshire, she most recently was with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston.

At Saint-Gaudens, she looks forward to learning more about the sculptor and the Cornish Colony. “I would be very grateful to anyone who can share stories with me about their time here, stories their grandfather may have told,” says Jackie.

Jackie does not have specific new proposals yet. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have book club gatherings and lemonade on Aspet’s front porch?” she asks, also noting the importance of digitizing the 60,000 items in the collections to be accessible to the public, and even improving the irrigation system for the grounds.

“We are going to be reaching out more to the public, letting people know we are here and letting them know that they can make an impact. If 100 donors gave $5 each, that would pay for tuning the piano—and our piano had belonged to Maxfield Parrish,” she states. And $2,000 to $4,000 can pay for a concert. “I want people to know that this park is here and has something for everybody,” Jackie says.

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Abraham Lincoln stands before a stately chair, face contemplative, poised as though he is about to deliver a speech. This larger-than-life bronze by Augustus Saint-Gaudens stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago—and in London’s Parliament Square and in Parque Lincoln
in Mexico City. 

In Madison Square Park in New York, the realism of Saint-Gaudens’s bronze of Civil War naval hero Admiral David Farragut is so stunning that viewers may note that as he stands braced as though on a ship’s deck, one button on his billowing coat is unfastened.

At the edge of Boston Common, the bronze relief memorial of Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment pays homage to one of the first Black regiments in the American Civil War.

Full-size bronze castings of these and other landmark monuments by Augustus Saint-Gaudens are among more than 60,000 items in the collections of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park in Cornish, New Hampshire. For over a century, this historic site has preserved, protected, and interpreted cultural resources associated with Saint-Gaudens. Now, a partnership of the Park Service and the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, its founding organization, it is a living tribute, furthering the spirit of Saint-Gaudens’s life and work by promoting the arts with exhibitions, special events, and programs.

 

From Apprentice to Monumental Artist

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, internationally renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens advanced public art in the United States. Often dealing with Civil War heroes, his monumental work contributed to the emerging national identity and narrative of American history. A master of small-scale sculpture, his breathtakingly detailed tiny reliefs for coins and medals included $10 and $20 gold pieces he designed at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt—coins whose imagery of a striding figure of Liberty evokes American icons and values.

Born in Dublin in 1848, Saint-Gaudens was transplanted to New York City in his first year with his immigrant parents, a French shoemaker father and an Irish mother. At 13 years old, he apprenticed to a cameo-cutter and began art classes.

Saint-Gaudens studied art in Paris and architecture in Rome. At age 26 he won his first major commission—for the Admiral Farragut Memorial. The commission sufficed for Augusta Fisher Homer’s father to allow him to marry his daughter.

 

The Journey to Cornish

Based in New York for most of his career with sojourns in Europe, in 1885 Saint-Gaudens visited New York friends who had purchased a farm in Cornish. Saint-Gaudens was working on his Lincoln at the time. The friend reportedly remarked that in New Hampshire he would find many “Lincoln-shaped men.”

In 1891, Saint-Gaudens purchased the Federal-style home next door to the friends. Although at first in terrible shape, it had sweeping views and a barn that served well as a studio. He named it Aspet after the birthplace of his father.

Saint-Gaudens’s presence in Cornish, his ongoing work and assistants in his studio, and his network of friends in the arts led more creative people to the area—American novelist Winston Churchill, dancer Isadora Duncan, and painter Maxfield Parrish among them. This creative hub became known as the Cornish Colony. Aspet was Saint-Gaudens’s primary home from 1900 to his death in 1907.

 

A Lasting Tribute

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial was initiated after his death by his wife Augusta. She wanted to establish a lasting tribute to him, a memorial open to the public with a substantial collection of his artwork that would nurture rising sculptors and would foster appreciation of the art of sculpture.

Augusta Saint-Gaudens left the Cornish house, property, and collections to a trust for this purpose. But her gift was contingent on establishment of a $100,000 endowment to assure that it was sustainable. Established in 1919, the endowment was finally fully funded in 1926, thanks to friends and fans of the artist and the Upper Valley community.

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial welcomed thousands of visitors during summers from the 1920s. Trustees acquired important works to expand the collections, including castings of monumental pieces. After Saint-Gaudens’s studio burned, the Memorial built the New Gallery and colonnaded Atrium, both dedicated in 1948. That year they launched the exhibition program. Saint-Gaudens loved music, so summer public concerts started in 1952.

In 1964, the Memorial transferred the property and collections to the National Park Service. The Memorial continues as a partner with the National Park Service, continuing extensive programming—a lively summer schedule of Sunday concerts, educational programs, exhibitions, and more. As Augusta wished, the “living legacy of Augustus Saint-Gaudens as a creative artist and cultural role model” endures. 

 

Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park 

139 Saint-Gaudens Road

Cornish, NH

www.saint-gaudens.org

Thursday–Monday 9 am– 4:30 pm,
May 22–October 31

Visitor Pass $10, Annual Pass $40