Artistic influence rarely travels in straight lines. It moves through chance encounters, shared geography, oral advice passed between generations, and letters that outlast the people who wrote them. Understanding how one artist shapes another requires tracing those paths across time and place, and accepting that the connections most worth studying are often the ones history has not yet named.
In this episode, art historian Kelly Christina Grant discusses her research into the relationship between Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller and Lois Mailou Jones, two Black women artists separated by nearly three decades but linked by a formative encounter at Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard — one of the few places during widespread segregation where Black leisure and community were possible. Grant traces how Fuller's direct encouragement to travel to Paris shaped Jones's decision to sail there in 1937, and how their correspondence continued into the 1940s, revealing a relationship built on mutual recognition rather than one-directional influence. She also situates Fuller within a broader lineage of Harlem Renaissance artists — including Aaron Douglas and Elizabeth Catlett — who drew on her early integration of Pan-African identity and narrative into sculptural form, and reflects on what the symposium revealed about the archives and materials that still remain to be examined, including diaries at the Schomburg, photographs at the Musée Rodin, and her own poetry, brought to the symposium by her grandson David Fuller.
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
Instagram - instagram.com/cgcparis
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.
","author_name":"Columbia Global Paris Center"}