More than a cultural flourishing, the Harlem Renaissance was a deliberate act of remaking the image of Black America at a moment when it was suppressed and rendered invisible by the mainstream art world. For the women artists at its center, that effort operated under an additional pressure: the expectation that marriage and family should take precedence over a professional artistic career.
In this episode, Denise Murrell, curator-at-large at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discusses Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's place at the founding of the Harlem Renaissance and the transatlantic currents that shaped her most significant works. Murrell offers close readings of Ethiopia Awakening and In Memory of Mary Turner as a Silent Protest Against Mob Violence, tracing their formal debt to Rodin and their engagement with the aesthetics of the African continent. She also reflects on why Fuller's refusal to choose between artistic vocation and family life makes her a founding figure not only in sculpture, but in the history of women's self-determination. Murrell's exhibitions include The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet to Matisse at Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery and the Musée d'Orsay.
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.
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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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