People, Locations, Episodes

Selma Burke, Artist born

Selma Burke

Selma Burke was born on this date in 1900. She was a Black sculptor.

As a child from Mooresville, North Carolina, she liked to whittle and model in clay, but her mother insisted she get an education for a "career." She was educated at Slater Industrial and State Normal School, now Winston-Salem State University; St. Agnes School of Nursing, Raleigh; and Women's Medical College, Philadelphia.

In 1924, she moved to New York, where she worked as a nurse, but art was her calling, and she continued to work as an artist.  Her accomplishments were so great that in 1935, she earned a Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship and, in 1936 a Boehler Foundation Fellowship.  Both awards allowed her to travel to Europe, where she studied ceramics with Povoleny in Vienna and sculpture with Maillol in Paris.  Among the influences on her were the painter Henri Matisse and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  Around 1940, she moved to Pittsburgh, PA.

She returned to New York and, in 1941, completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Columbia University.  At 70, this black woman completed a Doctorate in Arts and Letters at Livingstone College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Dr. Burke was a remarkable sculptor and a dedicated teacher.  In 1943, she won a competition sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission for the District of Columbia.  1944 President Roosevelt posed for the artist, unveiling her completed bronze plaque by President Harry S. Truman in 1945.  It can be seen at the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C.; the image was also used on the American ten-cent piece (dime).

Since the coin bears the engraver's initials, John Sinnock, Selma Burke has never received proper credit for the portrait. Burke was a great lover and supporter of the Arts. In 1968, she founded the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh.  At 80, in 1980, Burke produced her last monumental work, a Martin Luther King, Jr. statue that graces Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Burke was an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a non-profit Greek-lettered sorority of college-educated women who perform public service and emphasize the African American community. She received many other awards and honors.  Dr. Burke's artistic works were not fully acknowledged during her lifetime. Her pieces can be viewed in the Metropolitan and Whitney museums. Selma Burke died in 1995.

To be an Artist