Two works by noted African-American sculptor, Selma Burke, are on display in the Reading Public Museum’s newly renovated and expanded Cohen Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. The pieces — a marble bust of a young girl and a wooden mother and child — are on a two-year loan to The Museum courtesy of Anselene Morris and Frederick Toone Bacon.

Born in 1900 in Mooresville, North Carolina, Selma Burke’s work was never fully acknowledged. As a child, she liked to whittle and model in clay but her mother insisted she get an education for a “career.” She was educated at Slater Industrial and State Normal School, now Winston-Salem State University; St. Agnes School of Nursing, Raleigh; and Women’s Medical College, Philadelphia.

In 1924, she moved to New York where she worked as a nurse. But art was her calling, and she continued to work as an artist. Her accomplishments were so great that in 1935, she earned a Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship, and in 1936, a Boehler Foundation Fellowship. Both awards allowed her to travel to Europe where she studied ceramics with Povoleny in Vienna and sculpture with Maillol in Paris.

In 1941, Burke completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Columbia University. At the age of 70, she completed a Doctorate in Arts and Letters at Livingstone College, Salisbury, North Carolina. Selma was influenced by, among others, Henri Matisse, painter, and Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.

In 1944, President Roosevelt posed for the artist and her completed bronze plaque was unveiled by President Harry S. Truman in 1945. It can be seen at the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, D.C.; the image was also used on the American ten cent piece (dime). Since the coin bears the initials of the engraver, John Sinnock, Selma Burke has never received proper credit for the portrait.

In 1949, she married Herman Kobbe and moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania where she continued to work on her sculpture and tutor artists. Selma was a great lover and supporter of the arts. In 1968, she was the founder of the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, and remained an administrator there until 1981, when she returned to her home and studio in New Hope.

Burke was an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a non-profit Greek-lettered sorority of college-educated women who perform public service and place emphasis on the African American community. She received many other awards and honors. Other examples of her work can be viewed in the Metropolitan and Whitney museums.

At the age of 80, in 1980, Burke produced her last monumental work, a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., that graces Marshall Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. She died in 1995 in Newton, Pennsylvania. She had been working to complete a sculpture of civil rights activist Rosa  Parks.

The Reading Public Museum is located at 500 Museum Road, Reading, PA. Admission per day is: $8* adults (18-64), $5 children/seniors/college students (w/ID) and free to members and children three years old and under. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Web: www.readingpublicmuseum.org

*Special exhibition surcharge may apply.