"William Edmondson (December 1874-February 7,1951)

Was an African American folk art sculptor.In 1937 he was the first

African American artist to be given a one-person show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.He was born in Davidson County,Tennessee.He did not know the exact year of his birth because of a fire that destroyed the family Bible.Recent research into census records indicates that he was born in December.He was one of six children four boys and a sister of freed slaves Orange & Jane Edmondson.He grew up in what was then a rural part of Davidson County on the Compton plantation where his daddy & mama had been enslaved and now worked as sharecroppers.He had little or no formal education,it was reported that he was unable to read and or write.William daddy died sometime around 1889,and he and his siblings and mama moved to Nashville.William got a job working at the expansive near Nashville,Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway shops. After an injury he sustained at the Railway shops around 1909,William took a job as a janitor at the white Women's Hospital,where he for roughly 20 years.William never married.His income at Women's Hospital allowed him to buy a modest home in the segregated Edgehill neighborhood in Nashville.William shared the home with his mama and sister until their deaths,as well as occasionally other siblings,nieces,and nephews.When the Great Depression hit and the hospital closed in 1931,he did some part-time jobs and sold vegetables that he grew in his backyard.William entered the world of sculpture by a divine command.William reported that he received a vision from god,who told him to start sculpting.He began his career by working on tombstones,which were sold or given to friends in the community.Soon he began carving lawn ornaments,birdbath's,and decorative sculptures.He worked primarily with chunks of discarded limestone's from demolished buildings,which were delivered to him by wrecking companies' trucks.William work was influenced by his faith and membership in a nearby Primitive Church congregation.His sculptures are straightforward and emphatic forms ranging from one to three feet in height,many sharing his unique religious symbolism.William craved figures of biblical characters,angels, doves, turtles,eagles,rabbits, horses and other real fanciful creatures,local community icons such as preachers,lawyers and school teachers,celebrities of the day who were important to the African American community,and a small number of nude figures.He sold his sculptures along with his vegetables.About five years later,his art  was "discovered" by a white neighbor,Sidney Hirsch and his friends, Alfred & Elizabeth Starr.Alfred Starr,proprietor of chain of theaters catering to the African-American community and his wife Elizabeth,a painter became enthusiastic patrons and supporters of William's works.They introduced him to dozens of artist including Starr's boyhood friend Meyer (Mike) Wolf & his wife Louise Dahl-Wolfe.Louise was a photographer who had recently begun work for Harper Bazaar Magazine in New York.She made dozens of photographs William at work in backyard shop,which she took to New York.Louise brought William's work to the attention of fellow Tennessean Thomas Marby and his boss Alfred Barr,the director of the fledgling Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).They expressed interest in his work and William was accorded a one-man show at that Museum in 1937.In 1938,through MoMA's influence William sculpture was included in the "Three Centuries of Art in the United States"in Paris.interest in his work on the natural and international stage was short-lived,and he was viewed primarily as a novelty,or exemplar of the "primitive"race-memory of an untutored,naive old Negro stonecarver.He did not receive a solo exhibition of his work again in his lifetime.Locally,Alfred Starr continued to promote William's work to his artistic friends and acquaintences,who brought work directly from William's "sculpture yard" or through the local Lyzon Gallery.Alfred introduced the famed modernist photographer Edward Weston to William in 1941,and Weston made several striking photographs of him at work in his shop and yard.William's career lasted for about fifteen years.His work never commanded large sums during his life time.In 1939 and again in 1941,he worked under the Works Progress Administration,a government sponsored relief program that included artists.In the late 1940s,his health began to fail and his artistic production slowed.William professed to be uninterested in fame,he appears to have struggled financially for the final years of his life.William believed to have created about 300 works during his working lifetime.He died at his home Nashville,Tennessee,where illness had fined him to bed for several months.He is buried in Mt.Ararat Cemetery In Nashville.Due to a fire,Mt.Ararat burial records of the period are lost,so his exact gravesite is unknown and any tombstone has been lost.