She was packed and ready to sail to Paris

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]She was packed and ready to sail to Paris. Then the letter arrived. They were awfully sorry they hadn't known the color of her skin. Augusta Savage arrived in Harlem with $4.60.

[00:00:10]She completed Cooper Union's four-year program in three years. And in 1923, she won one of 100 scholarships to study at the Fontainbleau School of Fine Arts in Paris. The committee found out she was black and revoked it. She opened a studio in Harlem instead. Taught Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight for free.

[00:00:28]In 1939, she was the only black artist commissioned for the New York World's Fair. She spent over a year creating a 16-foot sculpture from plaster, a choir of black children arranged like strings of a harp. It was shown alongside Kooning and Dali. 5 million people saw it. When the fair closed, she couldn't afford to cast it in bronze, or ship it, or store it. So it got bulldozed. She died in relative obscurity in 1962.

[00:00:51]Art history moved on.