Spotlight | Augusta Savage

Welcome to Broadway Stages’ Spotlight, where we feature local shops, restaurants, organizations, individuals, and venues. March is women’s History Month. Throughout the month, Broadway Stages will feature and celebrate exceptional women who mave made a mark, and those who continue to make a difference in the story of our future. This week, we proudly present an incredible artist and devoted instructor, Augusta Savage.

Most people think an artist’s legacy is the work they leave behind. But few works of Augusta Savage remain. Instead, her legacy survived and thrived through the work of her students. She said, “I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work.”

Born in Green Cove Springs, FL in 1892, Savage began sculpting figures from clay as a child. But art was not seen as a realistic pursuit in that time and place. Savage even said her father opposed her interest in art so much that he “almost whipped all the art out of me.”

Still, she was determined to express herself. In 1921, with only $4.60 to her name, Savage traveled to New York to pursue her art studies. In New York, she attended The Cooper Union, a scholarship-based school and home to The Great Hall. She so applied herself that she completed a four-year program in only three years.

Following her time at The Cooper Union, Savage was selected to attend and given a scholarship to the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in Paris. But the school revoked Savage’s scholarship when they realized they had selected a Black woman.

Not to be discouraged, in the years that followed, Savage worked on private commissions. Subjects of her work included the sociologist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and the Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey.

She opened the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts In 1932, where she taught icons of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, and Norman Lewis. She also joined the artist collective, the 306 Group. Members of this collective included Elba Lightfoot, Robert Blackburn, and Romare Bearden.

In 1934, Savage continued to break new ground by becoming the first African-American member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (now the National Association of Women Artists).

Later in 1937, she established and became the first director of the Harlem Community Art Center in conjunction with the  Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. After attending its inauguration, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt decided to use it as a model for other arts centers nationwide.

As a prominent figure in the art circles of the time, Savage drew much attention, some of it unwanted. Joe Gould was a celebrated eccentric writer who frequented the same social circles as Savage. Gould became obsessed with Savage to the point of stalking her. He called her incessantly, followed her to parties, and told people she had agreed to marry him. In a short time, his attention grew even more aggressive and threatening.

By the early 1940s, Savage feared so for her safety that she fled Harlem for a farmhouse in the Catskill Mountains. While there, she continued to make busts and teach local children. But in Harlem, the community art center she had founded was forced to close in 1942 when federal funds were cut. Savage did not return to Harlem until Gould died in 1957. By then, the momentum of her production had waned.

Five years later, Augusta Savage passed away in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 70. While few of her works have survived, some do remain. Here, you can see evidence of her artistic brilliance. But we encourage you to also visit the work of those she taught and influenced. As Savage said, her “…monument will be in their work.”