March 28 Shero: Augusta Savage

(February 29, 1892 - March 26, 1962)

Augusta Savage was an African American sculptor, the first director of the Harlem Community Art enter (1937) and exhibitor in the 1939 World's Fair. Her sculpture "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was destroyed when the Fair closed because no money could be found to cast it in bronze.

One of the first women to study sculpture at Cooper Union, she opened the Savage School of Arts and Crafts in Harlem and in 1939, founded the Salon of Contemporary Negro Art. She was one of the first modern sculptors to depice sympathetic and realistic portrayals of African features in her work.