Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman

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.

Jeffreen M. Hayes, PhD is an art historian and curator, who merges administrative, curatorial and academic practices into her cultural practice of supporting artists and community development. Hayes is both an independent curator and the Executive Director of Threewalls, a non-profit contemporary art space based in Chicago. Bridget R. Cooks fills a joint appointment in the Program in African American Studies and the Department of Art History at University of California, Irvine. She is an Associate Professor within the School of Humanities and is also a part of the Graduate Programs in Visual Studies and Culture and Theory. Kirsten Pai Buick, PhD. is Associate Professor, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She has published extensively on African American art and been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and the Charles Gaius Bolin Fellowship at Williams College. Howard Dodson, PhD, is the Director Emeritus of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.