Art history has long organized itself around movements and groupings that determine whose work gets taught, preserved, and remembered. When the gaps in that history align with race, gender, and geography, what gets lost is structural.
In this episode, artist and academic Catherine Hahn discusses how she first encountered Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller in a fifteen-minute segment of a Harlem Renaissance course at SOAS in 1993, and how that encounter eventually led her to create a dedicated undergraduate module at the University of Kent. Hahn offers a close reading of Secret Sorrow, also known as Man Eating His Heart, tracing its relationship to Stephen Crane's 1895 symbolist poem In the Desert and arguing that the story of Fuller's visit to Rodin belongs to Fuller, not to him. She also closes with an urgent note on the ongoing collapse of arts education in British universities, and what is at stake when a newly diversified curriculum is dismantled before it takes root.
This special series of Atelier was produced in conjunction with a three-day symposium dedicated to celebrating the work and life of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller. Across these conversations, we bring together scholars, curators, and other special guests to revisit her legacy and situate it within its historical moment.
The symposium and podcast series were made possible with support from the Columbia Global Paris Center and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and with the participation of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Danforth Art Museum at Framingham State University.
Website - globalcenters.columbia.edu/paris
Newsletter - globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/paris-newsletters
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LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/cgcparis
YouTube - youtube.com/@CGCParis
Host: Marie Doezema
Production: Marie Doezema, Tessa Overvoorde, and Anthony Valette
Editing: Theo Albaric
Music: Robert Schumann’s Rêverie performed by Magdalena Stern-Baczewska
The Columbia Global Paris Center is part of a network of 11 global centers of Columbia University in the City of New York, one of the world's leading academic institutions. The centers serve as knowledge hubs that aim to educate and inspire through research, dialogue, and action. They advance understanding, facilitate partnerships, and build the bridges necessary to tackle our changing world.
Columbia Global brings together the Columbia Global Centers, Columbia World Projects, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.
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