A bronze by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller acquired by LACMA

6/7/22 - Acquisition - Los Angeles County Museum of Art - As we have mentioned on several occasions in this issue, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is carrying out a complete architectural and museum overhaul. This involves removing a large part of the museum’s collections from its walls, particularly those of early European art (see article and interviews with Jean-Patrice Marandel, who was curator for more than 25 years). However, the museum is continuing to make acquisitions in this field (see article), and recently acquired a work by the most Parisian of the emerging twentieth-century American artists, Meta Vaux Warrick’s bronze Little Dancer (ill. 1, 5 and 6), from the dealer Allan Chinn.

1. Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877 - 1968)
The Little Dancer
Bronze with dark brown patina - 18 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Photo : Frederic Uyttenhove

See the image in its page

Born into an influential family in Philadelphia’s African-American society, and despite the segregation laws of the early 20th century, Meta Vaux Warrick had access to a well-rounded education thanks to her membership of the "black bourgeoisie". She studied art from an early age, winning a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art in 1894, and later attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She excelled in sculpture and one of her teachers persuaded her mother to let her go to Paris, which was then the epicentre of creation where the greatest artists converged. She was the first black woman, and a sculptor at that. In doing so, she paved the way for Nancy Prophet, Lois Marilou Jones and Augusta Savage to follow several decades later.

In Paris, she was rejected by the American Girls’ Club in the Latin Quarter because of the colour of her skin and was taken in by a family friend, Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first black American painter to achieve international fame[[The Musée d’Orsay holds three works by Ossawa Tanner, unfortunately none…