Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller, Professor of Art History at the University of Cincinnati and author of New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934 (Rutgers, 2001), will present an illustrated lecture on the two best known works by Augusta Savage (1892-1962), Gamin and Lift Every Voice and Sing (1939). She will analyze Gamin in terms of its title and iconography, a brief history of the subject in 19th-century art, the sitter (the artist’s nephew), Savage’s training, and the long-lived popularity of the bust. Lift Every Voice and Sing was one of the most popular pieces at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Leininger-Miller maintains that it was a conservative, representational sculpture designed to both placate white jurors/viewers with its image of humble choir singers, and inspire African Americans with its message about musical talent, reverence, and racial uplift. She will examine its iconography, meaning, legacy, and Savage’s abrupt career end after being accused of Communism in the early 1940s. These two pieces overshadowed the breadth and depth of Savage’s oeuvre, whose works number over 130.