Augusta Savage Resources in other Schomburg Divisions
Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division
Augusta Savage by
A powerful biography in poems​ about a trailblazing artist and a pillar of the Harlem Renaissance--with an afterword by the curator of the Art & Artifacts Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Augusta Savage was arguably the most influential American artist of the 1930s. A gifted sculptor, Savage was commissioned to create a portrait bust of W.E.B. Du Bois for the New York Public Library. She flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, and became a teacher to an entire generation of African American artists, including Jacob Lawrence, and would go on to be nationally recognized as one of the featured artists at the 1939 World's Fair. She was the first-ever recorded Black gallerist. After being denied an artists' fellowship abroad on the basis of race, Augusta Savage worked to advance equal rights in the arts. And yet popular history has forgotten her name. Deftly written and brimming with photographs of Savage's stunning sculpture, this is an important portrait of an exceptional artist who, despite the limitations she faced, was compelled to forge a life through art and creativity.
Call Number: Sc E 22-582ISBN: 9780316298025Publication Date: 2022
Augusta Savage and the Art Schools of Harlem by
Augusta Savage and the art schools of Harlem / Deirdre L. Bibby -- Augusta Christine Savage : a chronology of her art and life, 1892-1962 / Juanita Marie Holland -- Catalogue of the exhibition.
Call Number: Sc F 89-45Publication Date: 1988
In Her Hands by
As a young girl in Florida in the 1890s, Augusta enjoyed nothing more than playing with clay. She would sculpt it into little figures: cows, chickens, ducks. Augusta's mother didn't mind but her father, a stern preacher, felt the girl was wasting time on idle nonsense. Augusta's sculpting talent blossomed as she grew into a young woman. Eventually, she found herself at a crossroad. Augusta wanted to pursue a career as an artist, but to do so she would have to leave behind all she knew. With only her passion to guide her, Augusta headed to New York City to follow her dream wherever it might take her.
Call Number: Sc F 18-202ISBN: 9781600608599Publication Date: 2009-10-01
Augusta Savage by
This is a timely, visual, exploration of the fascinating life and lasting legacy of sculptor Augusta Savage (1892-1962), who overcame poverty, racism, and sexual discrimination to become one of America's most influential twentieth-century artists. Her story is one of community-building, activism, and art education. Born just outside Jacksonville, Florida, Savage left the South to pursue new opportunities and opened a studio in Harlem, New York City, offering free art classes. She co-founded the Harlem Artists' Guild in 1935 and became the first director of the federally-supported Harlem Community Art Center. Through her leadership there, Savage played an instrumental role in the development of many artists: William Artis, Gwendolyn Knight, Gwendolyn Bennett, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Blackburn, Romare Bearden, among many others. This ground-breaking volume features fifty works by Savage, and those she mentored or influenced, as well as correspondence and period photographs.
Call Number: Sc F 18-236ISBN: 9781911282228Publication Date: 2018-10-23
Creating Their Own Image by
Hailed as "a captivating and thorough study of a long-ignored aspect of America's art history" (CHOICE), Creating Their Own Image offers the first comprehensive history of African-American women artists, spanning from slavery to the Harlem Renaissance and the tumultuous civil rights era, rightup to the present day. Lavishly illustrated throughout with color illustrations, this magnificent volume richly details hundreds of important works - including some images never before published - to present a portrait of artistic creativity unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Weaving together an expansive collection of artists, styles, and periods, Lisa Farrington argues that for centuries African-American women artists have created an alternative vision of how women of color can, are, and might be represented in American culture. From utilitarian objects such as quiltsand baskets to a wide array of fine arts, Creating Their Own Image serves up compelling evidence of the fundamental human need to convey one's life, emotions, and experiences on a canvas of one's own making.
ISBN: 9780199767601Publication Date: 2011-03-31- History of African-American Artists by A landmark work of art history: lavishly illustrated and extraordinary for its thoroughness, A History of African-American Artists -- conceived, researched, and written by the great American artist Romare Bearden with journalist Harry Henderson, who completed the work after Bearden's death in 1988 -- gives a conspectus of African-American art from the late eighteenth century to the present. It examines the lives and careers of more than fifty signal African-American artists, and the relation of their work to prevailing artistic, social, and political trends both in America and throughout the world. Beginning with a radical reevaluation of the enigma of Joshua Johnston, a late eighteenth-century portrait painter widely assumed by historians to be one of the earliest known African-American artists, Bearden and Henderson go on to examine the careers of Robert S. Duncanson, Edward M. Bannister, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, Edmonia Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Hale A. Woodruff, Augusta Savage, Charles H. Alston, Ellis Wilson, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., Horace Pippin, Alma W. Thomas, and many others. Illustrated with more than 420 black-and-white illustrations and 61 color reproductions -- including rediscovered classics, works no longer extant, and art never before seen in this country -- A History of African-American Artists is a stunning achievement.ISBN: 0394570162Publication Date: 1993-10-26
Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance by
Women artists of the Harlem Renaissance dealt with issues that were unique to both their gender and their race. They experienced racial prejudice, which limited their ability to obtain training and to be taken seriously as working artists. They also encountered prevailing sexism, often an even more serious barrier. Including seventy-two black and white illustrations, this book chronicles the challenges of women artists, who are in some cases unknown to the general public, and places their achievements in the artistic and cultural context of early twentieth-century America. Contributors to this first book on the women artists of the Harlem Renaissance proclaim the legacy of Edmonia Lewis, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Augusta Savage, Selma Burke, Elizabeth Prophet, Lois Maillou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, and many other painters, sculptors, and printmakers. In a time of more rigid gender roles, women artists faced the added struggle of raising families and attempting to gain support and encouragement from their often-reluctant spouses in order to pursue their art. They also confronted the challenge of convincing their fellow male artists that they, too, should be seen as important contributors to the artistic innovation of the era.
ISBN: 9781628460339Publication Date: 2014-08-04
Manuscripts Archives and Rare Books Division
- Augusta Savage papers, 1926-1987 byCall Number: Sc MG 731The collection includes press clippings about her sculpting career, manuscripts from her retirement period and some posthumous correspondence.
- Augusta Savage Finding Aid, Manuscripts, Rare Books and Archives DivisionAugusta Savage papers, 1926 - 1987
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division | Sc MG 731
.5 linear feet (1/2 archival box; 1 flat box)
Moving Image and Recorded Sound Divisions
- Oral history interview with Marvin Smith, 8 September 1998 Smith, Marvin, 1910-2003. Interviewee.Marvin Smith discusses his career in photography but also focuses on his artistic career outside the field of photography such as knitting and masks; influence of Augusta Savage.
Databases
Perform a keyword search "Augusta Savage"; accessible at the New York Public Library and branch Libraries
Photographs and Prints Division
Augusta Savage Photograph Collection [graphic]
Collection depicts sculptor Augusta Savage at work and in social gatherings, and views of some of her work, from the 1930s to the 1940s.
- Augusta Savage portrait collection | 1925? - 1989?Portraits of sculptor Augusta Savage consisting of individual quarter-length studio portraits; a group portrait of Savage with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and teachers Gwendolyn Bennett, Louise Jefferson and Sarah West at the Harlem Art Center (1937); and in a group portrait with Ernestine Rose, branch librarian of the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, and Roberta Bosley Hubert, founder of the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild, at the presentation of Savage's bust of Johnson (1939).
- Art and artistsThe artist series, the largest component of the collection, consists mainly of images of African-American artists active during the 20th century.