Art Talk: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Chakaia Booker

Three Sculptors will investigate the lives of these prominent African-American sculptors, putting their works into broader historical and social contexts. Fuller and Prophet were of a generation that faced extreme racial and gender bigotry, living through the New Negro Movement that sparked the Harlem Renaissance, the Suffragist Movement, and the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. Chakaiah Booker, a contemporary sculptor and print-maker, is most known for her innovative use of recycled tires as her main medium.

Fuller and Prophet endured financial hardships that limited their production, despite ambitions to work on a monumental scale. Both studied in Paris where Fuller became a protégé of Rodin, and was aided by Henry Ossawa Tanner, a family friend. Prophet became particularly noted for her work in carved wood. All three merged social concerns with materiality in their artistic careers.

Robert Bunkin is a painter, curator, art historian, and educator with a BS from CUNY and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has taught art history and studio art in several NYC art schools, universities, colleges, and museums.

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