Description
The Project :
This grant arose out of conversations following the elimination of the Cummer’s exhibition, Augusta Savage: Artist-Community-Activist , from the second round of the American Art Program’s 2017 exhibition competition. It is highly challenging for any museum to successfully organize an Augusta Savage exhibition, since relatively few of her works survive, and many that have are in poor condition. Given that the subject is an important one and a monograph study of Augusta Savage is long over-due, the American Art Program offered the Cummer staff the opportunity to apply for a discretionary grant in support of the accompanying exhibition catalogue.
Savage, who was born near the museum’s Jacksonville campus, overcame poverty and racism in early 20 th -century America to become a prominent Harlem Renaissance artist best-known for Realist portrait sculpture and allegorical subjects. As important, Savage was an influential teacher and community activist who founded several seminal organizations that shaped Harlem’s creative and cultural landscape. In 1935, she joined Gwendolyn Bennett, Arthur Schomburg, and artists including Aaron Douglas, and Norman Lewis, to create the Harlem Artists’ Guild, citing “the need to act collectively in the solution of the cultural, economic, social, and professional problems that confront us.” The group lobbied successfully for federal funding to form the Harlem Community Art Center, inspiring artists elsewhere to do the same. Savage additionally became the first African American woman to found a gallery when she opened the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art in 1939.
Rationale for Funding :
An in-depth, monographic study of Augusta Savage is long overdue. As conceived, this publication will be a timely, contextual study of an activist artist whose work, in all its aspects, had a dramatic impact on aspiring African American artists and writers in her orbit and beyond. The Cummer’s Augusta Savage project additionally continues the museum’s ongoing practice of actively honoring this artist’s legacy, which resonates so deeply with a local audience and particularly with the African American community that constitutes 30% of the museum’s visitation.
The catalogue will feature essays by leading voices in the field of African American art, including Kirsten Buick, and Bridget R. Cooks. A print run of 1,500 will receive wide distribution its publisher, D. Giles, a leader in fine arts publishing. The museum has also initiated a new practice of inviting donors to underwrite the purchase of catalogues for libraries, African American culture centers, and other public or academic research centers.
Grants such as this one, and that to MIAC also proposed in this round, allow the AAP to compensate for the strict parameters of the exhibition competition, in the course of which smaller institutions and project generally do not fare as well. In each of these cases, the proposed grant offers substantial support for a key component of the exhibition project.
