WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture

Selma Burke
Artist
Harlem Renaissance
Representation
None documented
0
Institutional Exhibitions
0
Works in Collection
2
Assets Indexed
0
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
60%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Harlem Renaissance
Related Artists
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About
Why this artist matters now
Selma Hortense Burke was an American sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Burke is best known for a bas relief portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt which may have been the model for his image on the obverse of the dime. She described herself as "a people's sculptor" and created many pieces of public art, often portraits of prominent African-American figures like Duke Ellington, Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington. In 1979, she was awarded the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. She summed up her life as an artist, "I really live and move in the atmosphere in which I am creating".
Source: Artsy · Trust score: 85% · Updated 1mo ago
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Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Harlem Renaissance
Medium
—
Related Artists
12 in graph
Record
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