"Meta VauxWarrick Fuller"(June 9,1877-March 18,1968)

Was an African American artist.She is best known as the first African American artist to make art celebrating Afrocentric themes.A multi-talented artist who created poetry and paintings,she is mainly known as as sculptor who explored her African-American roots.Meta created emotion-packed work with strong social commentary,and became a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance,a movement promoting African-American art.Born to a comfortable,middle class family who trained her in art,her career as an artist began after one of her high school projects was chosen to be included in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.Based upon this work,she won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art (PMSIA),now won The University of the Arts College of Art and Design,in 1894.In 1898,she received her diploma and teacher's certificate.Upon graduation in 1899,Meta traveled to Paris,where she studied with Raphael Collin,at the Academie Colarossi (sculpture),at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (drawing) and become a protege of Auguste Rodin.By the end of career in Paris,Meta had her works exhibited in many galleries including Siegfried Bing's Salon de l'Art Nouveau (Maison de I'Art Nouveau).Returning to Philadelphia in 1902,she was shunned by members of the Philadelphia art scene because of the prevailing racial beliefs of the time.This treatment did not prevent her from becoming the first African-American woman to receive a U.S. government commission when she was commissioned to create dioramas depicting African-American historical events for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition in 1907.In 1909,she married Solomon Carter Fuller,a young African-American doctor who went on to become a pioneering psychiatrist.The couple moved to Farmingham,Massachusetts,in 1910 close to the Westborough Psychiatric Hospital where Dr.Fuller was employed.That same year,a fire at a warehouse in Philadelphia destroyed her tools and the paintings and sculptures she had created over the previous sixteen years.Emotionally devastated by the loss,Meta turned her energies toward her family.Winning numerous awards for her work over her lifetime,she continued to exhibit her work until her last show at Howard University(Washington,D.C.) IN 1961.There is a middle school (Fuller Middle School) named after her and her husband in Framingham Massachusetts.The school was formerly the Framingham South High School but was converted to its current use when Framingham South and North High Schools merged in 1991.