Michael

William Ellisworth Artis sculpted portrait busts out of terracotta and stoneware. Michael depicts the head and neck of an African American boy. The boy’s identity is unknown. He may have been a student who modeled for Artis when he visited a school in his hometown of Washington, North Carolina. 

Artis was 14 years old when he and his family moved from North Carolina to New York. They were part of the Great Migration (1910 to 1970). The Great Migration was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural South to the industrialized cities of the North. Black Americans moved to escape racism and violence and to find better jobs and opportunities.

In the early 1930s, Artis studied sculpture and pottery under sculptor Augusta Savage. She was a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. This was an early 20th-century art movement in which New York City’s Harlem neighborhood became a Black cultural center. The Harlem Renaissance encouraged the creation of literature, music, stage performances, and art that celebrates Black culture. 

Artis won a Harmon Foundation prize in 1933. It funded his studies at the Art Students League of New York. He received a fellowship to promote art in Southern Black schools in the 1940s.