Renaissance Women: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1887-1968) was an early Harlem Renaissance sculpture, poet, playwright, and theater designer. She was a protégé of Auguste Rodin and is most famous for her emotionally captivating sculptures like Ethiopia Awakening. 

For Further Reading: 

• Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
• The Sculpture of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
• Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Collection

This Black History Month, we’re talking about Renaissance Women. As part of the famed cultural and artistic Harlem Renaissance movement, these women found beauty in an often ugly world.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, and Vanessa Handy. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello. My name is Vanessa Handy. I'm a producer at
Wonder Media Network and I'm so excited to be guest
hosting this week's episodes of Womanica. This Black History Month,
we are talking about Renaissance women as part of the
famed cultural and artistic Harlem Renaissance movement. These women found
beauty in an often ugly world. Standing in a small

(00:28):
attic studio, a woman picks up a piece of clay.
Dozens of ideas fight to get out of her hands
in the glow of a wide window. She puts the
plaster down on her high top table and begins to work,
from tiny dioramas to life sized sculptures and everything in between.
Today's Wilmaniquin spent her life immortalizing the full range of

(00:51):
the African American experience through art. Please welcome Meto Warwick Fuller.
Mito was born in Philadelphia in eighteen eighty seven. Her
parents were successful entrepreneurs who owned their own barbershop. They
encouraged Meta's interest in art, and she dabbled in music, drawing,

(01:11):
and dance. Her father took her to art museums, where
Meta's eyes lit up with excitement from the sculptures and
paintings for college. She chose the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art.
Even as a teenager, Meta's work focused on themes around
the black experience. When she graduated, her pieces landed her
honorable mentions, money, and prizes for best work in modeling.

(01:34):
She also won an award to fund another year of education.
After five years in college, the next natural step was
to study in Paris, which was common at the time
for American artists. She secured accommodations at the American Girls
Club before she left. At twenty two years old, Meta
braved the week long journey across the Atlantic Ocean by herself.

(01:58):
A close family friend and fellow artist, Henry Asua Tanner,
agreed to pick her up when she arrived, but when
that day came, Amita and Henry missed each other in
the hustle and bustle of the train station, so Mita
found her accommodations by herself. When she arrived at the
American Girls Club, an attendant led her through the beautiful

(02:19):
gardens and the ornate rooms of the building. She was
brought to the club's director, who was happy to welcome Meta,
that is until Amita removed her traveling veil and revealed
her face. The director exclaimed, you didn't tell me that
you were not a white girl. Why didn't you tell
me that you were not a white girl? Shocked, Mita replied,

(02:40):
I felt that I, as an American girl, was entitled
to come here, but she was not. Later that day,
her friend Henry Asue Tanner finally arrived at the American
Girls Club to make sure Mita was all right, and
together they left and media didn't look back. Once she

(03:03):
was settled into new accommodations, she rolled up her sleeves
and got to work. Mida didn't waste a second in Paris.
She studied under many prominent teachers and at several art
academies around the city, pulling together a wide range of
skills and techniques. The connections she made were invaluable. She
became friends with w E bead Boys, who had Meta

(03:24):
fix a tableau for the World's Fair in Paris in
nineteen hundred. The next year, she became August Rodan's protege
and spent three years studying with him. Meta became an
it girl after that. Asua encouraged her to showcase at
the American Women's Art Association's annual exhibit, Her bust of
John the Baptist stood out for being the only sculpture

(03:47):
it received high praise. The exhibit was also at the
same club that had denied her accommodation. The French press
gave her a nickname the Sculptor of horrors because of
how emotions only charged for pieces were. Although her work
was praised over in America too, there were frequent racists
under and overtones. But Anita's career continued to ramp up.

(04:12):
Bouncing around Paris, she had solo shows and exhibited in
a number of prominent galleries and salons. Finally, with so
many credentials under her belt, she booked a boat home,
but the United States didn't welcome her with open arms.
Back in Philly, gallery after gallery rejected her, claiming her
pieces were too domestic. Nevertheless, Anita's Paris connections paid off.

(04:37):
In nineteen o seven, she was commissioned by the United
States government to make dioramas for the Jamestown terse Centennial Exposition.
Meta made fourteen unique scenes with more than one hundred
and thirty plaster figures. Each diorama depicted a different area
of Black American history, viewers could look at the first
enslaved people landing in Jamestown, then take a few steps

(05:00):
and see them escaping through the underground railroad, and finish
with the dining room of a modern middle class family.
In Meta's work, black folks were the main characters in
their own defined worlds. Two years later, she married a
prominent doctor. They moved to Framingham, Massachusetts. Her husband wanted
her to put aside her artistic life and focus on

(05:22):
her domestic duties. Soon after, a warehouse fire broke out
back in Philadelphia and destroyed sixteen years worth of her work.
Meta was devastated. While some might have given up, Meda
channeled her pain into more art. Now a mother, Mita
found ways to separate her dueling duties and turned their

(05:43):
attic into a small studio. Although secluded in the countryside,
Meda didn't slow down, Keeping to the true nature of
a Renaissance woman. Meda got involved in theater design As
a stage artist in Boston. She created exquisite sets and
designed the lighting for performances, all while writing six plays
under the pseudonym Danny Deaver. In nineteen twenty one, the

(06:06):
Harlem Renaissance was dawning, W. E. B. Du Bois commissioned
her to make a piece for the America's Making Exposition
in New York City. He originally asked her to base
it on African Americans musical and industrial contributions in the
United States, but Meta had her own ideas. As part
of the Americans of Negro Lineage exhibit, Mita unveiled a

(06:29):
life sized sculpture of a woman wearing an ancient Egyptian headdress.
Her feet and legs are wrapped like a mummy, but
her right hand is beginning to unravel her garments. The
woman's face looks out as if toward the future with
a dignified gaze. It was titled Ethiopia. The sculpture honored
the Pan African kingdoms of the past, while signifying in

(06:51):
its title the only African country to not be colonized.
Mita said about the piece, here was a group who
had once made history, and now, after a long sleep,
was awaking, gradually unwinding the bandage of its mummied past,
and looking out on life again, expectant but unafraid, and
with at least a graceful gesture. In the nineteen fifties,

(07:16):
Mida's husband suffered from tuberculosis. She put down her tools
to take care of him. After he passed, she picked
them up again and found inspiration during the Civil Rights
era crafting tributes of the movement. As a widow, she
also filled her days writing poetry, scribbling lines and ideas
in her diaries. Mita passed away in nineteen sixty eight.

(07:38):
She was ninety one years old. Today, she is considered
one of the first prominent African American sculptors, and her
piece Ethiopia is considered the first Pan African American work
of art. All month, we are talking about Renaissance women.
For more information, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at
Womanica Podcast. Thanks to Liz and Jenny Kaplin for letting

(08:02):
me sit in talk to you tomorrow.