Museum of African American History_Fuller
Item set
Items
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Emancipation_plaster
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Talking Skull
"Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller's Talking Skull depicts an African man kneeling on the ground contemplating, or addressing a skull. The inspiration for the piece is said to be an African folk tale in which a young man comes across a talking skull. The young man reports his finding to his village and brings the chief to the skull, but it will not talk. In some interpretations, the young man is punished for lying, while in others, the skull later tells the young man "You talk too much!" Other interpretations of the sculpture suggest it represents the desire for communication between the living and the dead or the African American longing for connection to an African ancestral past." Museum of African American History website -
Emancipation
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In Memory of Mary Turner: As a Silent Protest Against Mob Violence
"This sculpture, depicting a woman cradling an infant in her arms and leaning away from grasping hands and flames at the base, was created in response to the vicious lynching of a young woman named Mary Turner in 1918. Mary Turner's husband had been lynched and she publicly denounced his murder. In response, a mob of hundreds captured her, hung her upside down from a tree, and brutally killed her and her unborn child. Artist Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's sculpture is one of the first created by an African American specifically depicting the brutality of lynch mobs." Museum of African American History website