155

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

Talking Skull

1939

bronze

28 x 40 x 15 in.

"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

Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket