Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Augusta Savage

  

Great article: 

https://artdaily.cc/news/134379/The-Black-woman-artist-who-crafted-a-life-she-was-told-she-couldn-t-have#.YGTBItXwZoE


Also see 

https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/augusta-savage-renaissance-woman


Organized by guest curator Jeffreen M. Hayes, Ph.D., the Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman exhibition features nearly 80 works of art, including sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, and is the first to reassess Harlem Renaissance artist Augusta Savage’s contributions to art and cultural history in light of 21st-century attention to the concept of the artist-activist. The fully illustrated companion catalogue presents the most up-to-date scholarly research, re-examines Savage’s place in the history of American sculpture and positions her as a leading figure who broke down the barriers she and her students encountered while seeking to participate fully in the art world.  

A gifted sculptor, Savage (1892 - 1962) was born in Green Cove Springs and later became a significant teacher, leader, and catalyst for change. Overcoming poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination, Savage became one of this country’s most influential artists of the 20th century, playing an instrumental role in the development of some of the most celebrated African American artists, including: Charles Alston, William Artis, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Selma Burke, Ernest Crichlow, Gwendolyn Knight, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Morgan and Marvin Smith, whose works are also included in the exhibition. A prodigious and highly acclaimed artist in her own right, Augusta Savage created works that elevated images of black culture into mainstream America. A central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, she worked with other leaders, writers, musicians, and artists to showcase the contributions of African American culture. As a community organizer and teacher, Savage created a bridge between the first generation of Harlem Renaissance artists and subsequent generations of artists.

Through this exhibition, the Museum will highlight the artistic, social, and historic impact of Augusta Savage who, despite how she transformed the artistic landscape, is deserving of greater national appreciation. 

Augusta Savage, The Harp, 1939, bronze, 10¾ x 9½ x 4 inches. University of North Florida, Thomas G. Carpenter Library, Special Collections and Archives, Eartha M. M. White Collection.

Today, Savage is best known for Lift Every Voice and Sing (formerly known as The Harp), her commissioned sculpture for the 1939 World’s Fair, and is recognized in Black community as an educator and an important community leader. However, Savage’s artistic skill was widely acclaimed nationally and internationally during her lifetime, and a further examination of her artistic legacy is long overdue. 

Andrew Herman, Augusta Savage with Her Sculpture “Realization,” 1938, Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration, gelatin silver print, 10 x 8 inches. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL, Photographs and Prints Division, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 86-0036.


This exhibition will introduce Savage as a pioneering artist and community organizer who helped shape artistic movements that changed the way artists represent the Black figure, using art as a form of activism. This exhibition has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sotheby’s Prize and was on view between October 12, 2018 to April 7, 2019.


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"Gamin"
“Gamin,” ca. 1929, by Augusta Savage. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of Benjamin and Olya Margolin.

This sculpture, “Gamin,” was created by Augusta Savage (1892–1962) early in her career. It was based on her nephew, Ellis Ford. The French word gamin means ​“street urchin,” and the figure’s wrinkled shirt and cap emphasize his impoverished appearance. The child’s expression suggests a life of hardship and wisdom beyond his years.



Savage’s career was fostered by the climate of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. She was a sculptor, influential teacher, and community art program director. In 1934, she became the first African American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. Dedicated to expanding educational and professional opportunities for African American artists, she founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, which was later developed into the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Community Art Center, where she was its first director.

Savage believed that teaching others was far more important than creating art herself and explained her motivation in an interview: ​“If I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work. No one could ask for more than that.”

“Gamin” is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Read more about Savage and this sculpture on the museum’s website and at Oh Freedom! Teaching Art and the Civil Rights Movement, an education resource and collaboration between the museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. View a photo of Savage in the collection of the Smithsonian’s American Archives of Art.



This is a timely, visual, exploration of the fascinating life and lasting legacy of sculptor Augusta Savage (1892-1962), who overcame poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination to become one of America's most influential twentieth-century artists. Her story is one of community-building, activism, and art education.

Born just outside Jacksonville, Florida, Savage left the South to pursue new opportunities and opened a studio in Harlem, New York City, offering free art classes. She co-founded the Harlem Artists’ Guild in 1935 and became the first director of the federally-supported Harlem Community Art Center. Through her leadership there, Savage played an instrumental role in the development of many artists: William Artis, Gwendolyn Knight, Gwendolyn Bennett, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Blackburn, Romare Bearden, among many others.

This ground-breaking volume features fifty works by Savage, and those she mentored or influenced, as well as correspondence and period photographs.

Monday, March 15, 2021

Major Gift Celebrating Black American Artists of the 20th Century

 

Richard Mayhew, Overture, 2001; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Richard Mayhew; photo: Katherine Du Tiel, courtesy SFMOMA
Hughie Lee-Smith, Two Boys, 1968; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith/ARS (Artist Rights Society), New York; photo: Ian Reeves
Loïs Mailou Jones, Peasants at Kenscoff, 1955; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Estate of Loïs Mailou Jones; photo: Ian Reeves
Elizabeth Catlett, Singing Head, 1968; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Catlett Mora Family Trust / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS); photo: David Heald
Richard Mayhew, Perennial Sentinel, 2000; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Richard Mayhew; photo: Katherine Du Tiel, courtesy SFMOMA
Pamela J. Joyner. © DREW ALTIZER/COURTESY SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has announced a major gift of 31 paintings, sculptures and drawings by 20 American artists from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection—celebrated for its intergenerational holdings of abstract art of the African diaspora. The addition of important historical works by Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis and Richard Mayhew, among many others, has inspired a reexamination of SFMOMA’s permanent collection and is having a transformative impact on its galleries.

The extraordinary gift enables SFMOMA to feature a broader range of artists’ contributions to key modernist movements, and to explore their extensive social networks and associations in cities across the United States and abroad. This group of works plays a foundational part in the museum’s long-term goals to present the history of American art through multiple perspectives and voices, and in dialogue with wider international contexts. In addition to adding new artists and stories to the museum’s holdings, the Joyner/Giuffrida Gift provides an opportunity to reimagine SFMOMA’s permanent collection from the inside out.

“We are thrilled by this generous and transformative gift to SFMOMA and inspired by Pamela and Fred’s more than two decades of outstanding collecting and advocacy for Black artists,” said Neal Benezra, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “These important works strengthen the museum’s collection in critical ways and allow us to present a richer, more expansive picture of art history.”

“This group of artists was written out of mid-century modernist history only because they were Black. What I want visitors to take away is that there were people of color not only working in the field, but defining the character of the movement at that time,” said Pamela J. Joyner. “SFMOMA is playing a major role by contextualizing these works where they always should have hung. That is a major rewriting of art history to tell the whole story.”

Joyner, a collector for many years and an SFMOMA trustee since January 2020, worked with former Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture Gary Garrels to carefully select pieces to fill in historical gaps. The gift helps propel forward other recent efforts SFMOMA has made to diversify its collection, such as the establishment of the Peggy Guggenheim Fund in 2019. Furthering those efforts, “the gift shows us the stories we missed, holds up a fresh lens to the stories we’ve been telling and points our acquisition strategy in new directions,” said Sarah Roberts, Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture, who is working with Joyner and Giuffrida on the installation and interpretation of the gift.