As February comes to a close so too does “Augusta Savage Month” in Jacksonville, Florida. Savage (1892-1962) was born in adjacent Green Cove Springs. The honor coincides with an exhibit highlighting her work and influence at Jacksonville’s Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman constitutes the largest exhibit ever organized by the museum and the most comprehensive examination of Savage’s career. The exhibition showcases 80 total pieces including 19 sculptures from Savage in addition to work from a variety of the artists she influenced.
Savage became an accomplished sculptor in the 1920s and a core figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming of art produced by African-Americans across a wide spectrum during the 20s and 30s centered in Harlem. Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes and Josephine Baker are also closely associated with the era.
The exhibition’s title, however, has a deeper meaning than Savage’s connection to the Harlem Renaissance.
“She was an artist, educator, activist and organizer who also wrote short stories and painted,” the exhibition’s guest curator Jeffreen Hayes said. “Furthermore, when we think about a person being culturally and socially adept in many areas, we often name men. Women are not commonly thought of as a renaissance force, and the title recovers Savage while calling women who see themselves in this way, but do not say it.”
Despite achieving a significant level of prominence during her career, it’s likely you’ve never run across her work previously.
Savage as an artist is best known for The Harp, a sculpture commissioned for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Despite a strong popular reception, without funding to cast it, The Harp was destroyed shortly after the Fair.
More broadly, as a Black woman, museums weren’t clamoring for her work. A recent study found 85% percent of artists represented in U.S. museum collections are white and 87% are male.
Where does that leave Savage among America’s great 20th Century artists?
“We are in a moment where the canon is being challenged and expanded because of how history overlooks women and artists of color,” Hayes said. “For many of us in the art world who have spent our careers researching, writing and curating exhibitions about women and artists of color, these artists have always had a place in art, regardless of their social or racial identity. When thinking about Savage, her place has always been an artist who was a brilliant sculptor who used her art to forge a path for staying true to one’s artistic passion.”
Savage’s race and gender weren’t the only obstacles she faced in becoming an artist. She was born into a poor family, the seventh of 14 children. Her father, a Methodist minister, violently opposed her expressed interest in pursuing art as a career.
“My father licked me four or five times a week and almost whipped all the art out of me,” Savage is quoted as having said.
None of that could hold her down though. She made her way to New York in the early 1920s, graduating from the Cooper Union School of Art. Grants and awards won for her work at the time allowed her to study and travel extensively in Europe.
“Savage’s history and place in our city, state and nation should be honored,” the Cummer Museum’s George W. and Kathleen I. Gibbs Director and Chief Executive Officer Adam Levine said. “With our current exhibition, the Cummer Museum and guest curator Jeffreen Hayes are leading the effort to tell Savage’s story and further explore and solidify her place in history.”
That place in history includes her becoming the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1934 and the first Black woman to open her own gallery.
Her efforts in opening opportunities for other African-American artists through the Works Progress Administration also merit recognition. The exhibit reinforces the extent to which Savage tied her artistic legacy to the others she influenced.
“If I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work,” Savage is quoted as saying. “No one could ask for more than that.”
Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman is on view at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens through April 7.
