Black Female Artists Who Broke The Stained Glass Painted Ceiling

Throughout history, Black female creatives have used art to express their ideas and feelings in a society that otherwise silenced them.

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Art can offer a way for those who feel voiceless to communicate. It can be a vehicle for expressing ideas that are too complicated for words, and feelings that are too deep for speech to do justice. Art also allows us to envision the world the way we wish it were. Perhaps no other group in history has needed these powers provided by art, more than Black women.

Still, the art world has been historically male and white-dominated. The Black Arts Movement – the visual arm of the Black Power Movement – was mostly run by men. Even female-led groups using art as a vehicle for feminism famously excluded Black women. Though entry into the art world seemed impossible for Black women in the 1800s and even parts of the 1900s, a handful of bold Black women broke through. They created careers in an industry that tried to deny them and changed the way we think with the ideas expressed in their creations. These are five of those women.

Edmonia Lewis

(1844 – 1907)

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Edmonia Lewis was of African American and Native-American descent and created artwork that honored both of her heritages. However, she was mostly known for sculpting historical figures and was the first professional BIPOC sculptor in the U.S.

Lewis sculpted important figures from the Civil War in her early years, and would eventually go on to sculpt portrait medallions of abolitionists. She even created pieces depicting Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, who allegedly sat for these sculptures.

Lewis was a rebel and did not shy away from creating what she wanted, which eventually included a topless sculpture of Cleopatra. This drew tremendous scrutiny from conservative white men at the time.

Lewis eventually moved to Rome, where she carried out the remainder of her sculpting career. She told The New York Times she was “practically driven” there because opportunities for Black women were too limited in the U.S.

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller

(1877 – 1968)

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Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller is known for her realistic and intimate depictions of the African and African American experience. She started by creating portraits of friends, family and herself. Fuller eventually became the first Black woman to receive a federal commission for her art, when W.E.B. Du Bois hired her to create a series of pieces for world fairs.

In her later years, she focused on poetry, writing about the Civil Rights movement. No matter the medium, she always honored African heritage, while nodding to a hopeful future for African Americans in her work.

Alma Woodsey Thomas

(1891 – 1978)

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Alma Woodsey Thomas became the first ever student to graduate from Howard University with a fine arts degree in 1924. Her artistic journey was anything but conventional from there. Thomas would teach art at a junior high school for 35 years before finally focusing full-time on her own creative work.

Thomas was 75 years old before she had a piece featured in an exhibit, making her not only a role model for Black women artists but also for artists getting their start later in life. Thomas eventually became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition in New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

Dingda McCannon

Born 1947

Dingda McCannon was one of the founding members of the Where We At (WWA) Black Women’s Artist organization in 1971. The WWA was created in response to the nearly non-existent opportunities for Black female artists at the time. McCannon hosted some of the WWA’s very first meetings at her home in Brooklyn. The WWA would go on to put on a show at the Acts of Art Gallery in New York, and McCannon would become a standout artist in the show.

McCannon studied under several Harlem Renaissance artists. She is known for using mixed media and creating three-dimensional pieces using everything from quilting to oil painting to printmaking in her works, which reflect and elevate the culture of Black women. She has works in the Brooklyn Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.