Although Miller usually depicted his women in shops, he occasionally presented them in other public places, such as an art museum. He sometimes would take his students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Saturday morning to examine works of art firsthand. This painting depicts such an excursion, for the model was one of Miller’s students, Dorothea Schwarcz Greenbaum (b. 1893), who would later become a sculptor. As she recalled, "Although we would pay homage to Titian and Rubens, most of our time was spent in the gloomy basement, studying the casts of Greek sculpture. He knew every fold in the draperies of the figures from the Parthenon and could draw them from memory. I do not know why he was a painter and not a sculptor-all his teaching led in that direction." Miller filled a large part of the scene with a huge Corinthian capital that vies in importance with the figure. Other classical objects are partially visible, and the model rests her arm on the edge of a Roman sarcophagus. The setting of this painting may be the then newly opened Cloisters of the museum, but Miller did not render the ancient objects literally enough for them to be identified definitely as works in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection.
Woman in Sculpture Hall summarizes Miller’s mature art for it demonstrates two of his obsessions: modern woman and antique sculpture. Greenbaum is presented as a typical Miller woman, somewhat chubby, with a round face, large eyes, and full lips, wearing the usual "shopper" attire -- a fashionable overcoat, beaded necklace, and cloche -- with handbag at her side. The museum setting may have been chosen as a vehicle for Miller to express more openly his respect for classical art. Once Miller adopted the shopper image, he rarely referred to antique motifs, even in his nudes. Instead, he conceived his women as sculpture, painting them fully modeled and like stone works of art. The artist described this painting’s masses as "falling in two columns." Miller also seems to have purposely limited his palette to dull beiges and oranges, alluding to the color of stone. With such a color scheme he was able to present his two interests in a single, unified image.
