Remaking Race and History

This beautifully written study focuses on the life and public sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller (1877-1968), one of the early twentieth century's few African American women artists. To understand Fuller's strategy for negotiating race, history, and visual representation, Reneacute;e Ater examines the artist's contributions to three early twentieth-century expositions: the Warwick Tableaux, a set of dioramas for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition (1907);Emancipation, a freestanding group for the National Emancipation Exposition (1913); andEthiopia, the figure of a single female for the America's Making Exposition (1921). Ater argues that Fuller's efforts to represent black identity in art provide a window on the Progressive Era and its heated debates about race, national identity, and culture.