Facial Sculpture Front

Working in Harlem for the Works Progress Administration and the Harlem Artists Guild, Burke taught art appreciation and education to New York youth. During the 1930s, she travelled across Europe and in 1940, she opened the Selma Burke School of Sculpture in New York City, graduating the following year with an MFA from Columbia University.  In 1942 she was one of the first African American women to enroll in the Navy. During her service, she was commissioned to do a bronze relief portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The portrait she created was adapted by the mint and is currently on the U.S. dime. Burke founded the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1968, where she continued to introduce art to inner-city youth.

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