12
The Spirit|Westsider westsidespirit.com
AUGUSTA SAVAGE RETURNS TO NEW YORK A new exhibit seeks to restore the Harlem Renaissance figure’s rightful place in the history of the city and American art BY VAL CASTRONOVO
This show comes to the New-York Historical Society by way of the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida, not far from where Augusta Savage (1892-1962) was born, in Green Cove Springs in the Jim Crow South. The Florida native battled poverty and race and gender discrimination to become a revered sculptor, teacher and community organizer, nurturing the likes of Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis and Gwendolyn Knight along the way. “She is not known today, but she was one of the great movers and shakers of the art world in her time,” associate curator Wendy Ikemoto, who coordinated the show at the Society, said on a tour. Savage worked tirelessly to raise the profile of African-American artists, male and female. The exhibit is comprised of more than 75 items — sculptures, paintings, photographs and archival material — that showcase her talent and that of the masters who flocked to her Harlem studio during the “Negro Renaissance.” It was a period of cultural and artistic flowering in the 1920s and 1930s when “work was produced by Black artists about the Black lived experience,” exhibit curator Jeffreen Hayes writes in the catalog.
Artist, Activist and Teacher Savage’s gift was apparent at a young age, when she sculpted ducks out of the red clay in her backyard in Green Cove Springs. She made her way to New York in 1921 and enrolled in the tuition-free Cooper Union School of Art, completing a four-
JUNE 6-12,2019
A Commitment to Racial Uplift
Works by Savage’s students and associates — Lawrence, Knight, Lewis, Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, William IF YOU GO Artis — are exhibited in tandem with those WHAT: HAT: Augusta Savage: naissance Woman Renaissance of the artist herself, in HERE: The New-York WHERE: part because so many storical Society Historical of Savage’s sculp0 Central Park West 170 tures no longer exHEN: Through July 28 WHEN: ist. One reason why? ww.nyhistory.org www.nyhistory.org She didn’t have the funds to cast many in bronze, so most of year program early. Her efforts her production was were e rewarded with a summer left in plaster, a fragscholarship olarship to the Fontainebleau ile material. School ool of Fine Arts in France Ikemoto commented — an n honor that was famously on the stylistic differrescinded inded when a commitences between Savage tee of white American men and her pupils: “That learned ned that she was black. speaks to generational Correspondence rrespondence by W.E.B. differences, but it also Du Bois and others regarding says something about Savthe decision is on view. A 1923 age’s own teaching philosletter er documents that the comophy. This was somebody mittee ee felt “... it would not be who wasn’t trying to wise e to have a colored studictate a style to dentt ... disagreeable her students. complications plications would She was tryarise…” e…” ing to comIkemoto moto said: “Savage mu n icate a alerted ted the press and encommitment to gaged ed directly with the meAugusta Savage racial i l uplift, lift a dia and headlines. This d made d h dli hi was (1892–1962)”The commitment to a black woman speaking out in the Diving Boy,” c. 1939 self-definition.” Jim Crow era. She was catapulted Bronze, 33¾ x 8 “ The Div i n g onto the national stage.” The in- x 9¼ in.Cummer Museum of Art & cident was transformative, moti- Gardens, Jacksonville, Boy” (ca. 1939), a realistic and vating Augusta to become a “race Florida, Bequest of ver y tender woman,” a dedicated activist on Ninah M. H. Cummer, C.0.602.1 Public work, was chobehalf of the black community. sen to open the A dearth of portrait commis- domain in practice show here besions during the Depression led her to pivot to teaching. In 1932, her cause it is one of the few pieces that Harlem studio became the Savage the sculptor cast in bronze. It was Studio of Arts and Crafts, offering featured in 1939 at the opening of free art education to the public. She her own gallery, the Salon of Conlater founded the Harlem Communi- temporary Negro Art, the first art ty Art Center at the invitation of the gallery founded by a black woman. WPA’s Federal Art Project. Note her It closed after only three months. Said Ikemoto: “Savage underphotograph with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at the center’s opening in stood the need for an infrastructure for black artists to work. 1937, the ultimate validation.
Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000)”The Card Game,” 1953 Tempera on board, 19 x 23½ in. SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection, Gift of Walter O. Evans and, Mrs. Linda J. Evans© 2018 The T Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society So (ARS), New York.
She said that in her whole life, in all the African-American homes she African-A visited, only two tw contained works by African-American artists: so African-Am how is the African-American artist Afri to survive? She Sh really tried to build that infrastructure.” infrastruc
A Masterpiece Destroyed “Gamin” (ca. 1930; street urchin presumed likeness of in French), a p
Augusta Savage (1892–1962)”Lift Every Voice and Sing,” 1939Bronze, 10¾ x 9½ x 4 in. University of North Florida, Thomas G. Carpenter Library Special Collections and Archives, Eartha M. M. White Collection ©1939 World’s Fair Committee and the Artist.
Savage’s nephew, is one of her bestknown works. It’s a small, classicalstyle bust that was lauded for its sensitive portrayal of an AfricanAmerican boy, countering demeaning stereotypes of black youth. The child’s shirt and cap are wrinkled though “you also see a resilient figure, someone who is thoughtful, someone who is grounded despite his impoverished circumstances,” Ikemoto said. But Savage’s crown and glory was a commission for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Inspired by the lyrics of the eponymous hymn (the socalled Black National Anthem), the 16-foot-high plaster imagined a chorus of African-American youth as the strings of a harp, cradled in the arm of God. Alas, as she did not have the wherewithal to cast the piece in bronze or store it, it was razed as part of the Fair’s cleanup — this in spite of the fact that it attracted over five million visitors. Souvenir replicas, like the one here, are all that remain. Ikemoto said, “In her life, Augusta Savage increased the visibility of African-American artists, created an infrastructure for their work and created an intellectual space for its discussion. And it’s still happening. It happens through stories like hers and exhibitions like this.”