Most accounts of Augusta Savage’s remarkable career end the same way. After helping define the Harlem Renaissance as a sculptor, educator, and mentor to generations of Black artists, Savage left New York City for a farmhouse in Saugerties following the 1939 World’s Fair. The implication is often that one of America’s most influential artists faded quietly into obscurity.
The organizers of ShoutOut Saugerties’s August 1 celebration of Savage think that ending gets the story wrong.
“There’s this common narrative that she retreated from public life,” says co-curator Randall Harris. “But from what I’m gathering, she moved into this farmhouse in Saugerties and she was creating work and entertaining other artists and teaching and doing education up this way as well.”
That overlooked final chapter is the focus of a two-part event celebrating Savage’s life and legacy. The afternoon begins at the Orpheum Theatre with a screening of the PBS American Masters documentary Searching for Augusta Savage, followed by a conversation with filmmaker Charlotte Mangin, dramatic readings from Marilyn Nelson’s award-winning biography performed by actor Sharon Washington, and readings of little-known short stories Savage wrote while living in Saugerties, recently recovered from the Schomburg Center archives.
The celebration continues at the Lamb Center with “Augusta Savage: A Monumental Influence,” an exhibition co-curated by Harris and sculptor Carol Griffin that pairs contemporary artists with Savage’s work. The opening reception is on August 1 from 4-7pm and continues through August 30.
For Harris, who operates Figureworks Gallery in Saugerties, curating the exhibition became an education in its own right. “I personally didn’t know much about her,” he admits. “I didn’t even know she was part of the Saugerties community until recently.”
What surprised him wasn’t simply that Savage had lived in Saugerties for more than 15 years, but how fully she became part of the community. She taught Sunday school at what is now the Lutheran Church of the Atonement, accepted sculpture commissions, welcomed neighborhood children to her home, and remained committed to teaching, the vocation that had defined much of her career.
That community connection is reflected in one of the exhibition’s highlights: sculptures Savage created for members of the Finger family, her Saugerties neighbors. Among them are busts of two children and a small ceramic horse she gave them to play with—works that have rarely, if ever, been publicly exhibited. “One piece has been shown a few times,” Harris says of one bust. “The other, I don’t even know if it’s been photographed.”
Because so much of Savage’s work has been lost—most famously The Harp, the monumental sculpture created for the 1939 World’s Fair that was destroyed after the exposition—Harris and Griffin decided not to mount a conventional retrospective. Instead, they invited artists whose own work reflects Savage’s enduring influence, including Griffin, Monique Luchetti, JoAnne McFarland, Debra Priestly, and Peter Bradley.
The exhibition’s guiding principle comes directly from Savage herself. “Her goal was to educate and inspire young artists to go on and create, and that would be her legacy,” Harris says. “We took that direct quote from her and made that basically the theme for the show.”
The timing feels apt. In recent years, Savage has received long-overdue recognition through the PBS documentary, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Harlem Renaissance exhibition, the New York Public Library’s educational initiatives, and the Smithsonian’s endowed Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art position.
Harris sees that renewed attention as overdue recognition not only for Savage’s sculpture but also for the perseverance required of women artists of her generation. “I think women artists in general were underrepresented,” he says. “She was unique as a woman sculptor who gained that kind of recognition and I think that’s being recognized again—or for the first time, actually.”
The August 1 celebration argues that Savage’s final years were not an epilogue but an essential part of her story. In Saugerties, she continued making art, nurturing young people, and shaping the lives of those around her—just as she had in Harlem. The work may have become more local, but her influence spread wider still.
One correction. The first photo is “Lois Finger”, not Wesley.
Thanks for the heads-up Karen. That’s been updated!