Ethiopia Awakening

A native of Philadelphia, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School of the Industrial Arts before studying abroad in Paris, where she was influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois and Auguste Rodin. Du Bois had a hand in orchestrating Fuller’s commission for a work for the 1921 America’s Making exposition in New York City. She conceived this monumental bronze sculpture and offered this description: “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.” Fuller’s achievement has been recognized as a key work of the Harlem Renaissance and the first Pan-African American work of art. But there is a painful irony in the sculpture’s creation: the exposition celebrated the contributions of America’s immigrants—at the time construed to include African Americans.