Though archival work can piece together Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller’s work, exhibitions, and influence across generations, some things can only be known through the people who knew her: the everyday details, memories, and stories that bring an artist’s life into focus.
In this episode, David Fuller, grandson of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, shares personal memories of the woman he knew as a gentle, tireless presence in the family home at 31 Warren Road in Framingham. He describes her quiet dedication to her work and to the women in her neighborhood whom she helped through poetry, conversation, and long walks in the garden; the story of the studio she built from her own inheritance, without telling her husband until the walls were up; the man sent by neighbors to ask the Fullers to move, and how a china tea service and a list of her sculptures changed his mind. He also reflects on what the Paris symposium revealed to him about her life before the family home — the Paris years, the fire, the decades of work he was too young to fully understand — and on what he hopes to carry back to his siblings, his children, and his grandchildren.
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"}