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Wednesday
August 27th 2008 		a non-profit education organization
December 31

Selma Burke
*On this date, Selma Burke born in 1900. She was an African-American sculptor who was from Mooresville, North Carolina.

Burke is best known for her work of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the American ten cent piece (dime) and in the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington D. C. As a child she liked to whittle and model in clay but her first career was in nursing. She graduated from the St. Agnes Training School for Nurses in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1924. After working in New York she turned to art receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in 1941.

Burke also studied ceramics in Vienna and sculpture in Paris. Her influences include Matisse and Frank Lloyd Wright. Selma Burke has received many awards and honorary doctoral degrees. Her pieces can be viewed in the Metropolitan and Whitney museums. Selma Burke died in 1995.

Reference:
The biographical dictionary of Black Americans
by Rachel Krantz and Elizabeth A.Ryan
Copyright 1992, Facts on File, New York, NY
ISBN 0-8160-2324-7

 

    

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