Herstory

Artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was born March 19, 1890 in Warwick, Rhode Island and died December 13, 1960. She was the second of three children and the only daughter of her parents. Her mother, Rose Walker Profitt was African American; her father, William H. Profitt was a Narragansett Indian. She was an American artist of the African-American and Native American ancestry, known for her sculpture. She was the first African-American graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918. Prophet was married to Francis Ford from 1915 to 1932 but there were no children from the marriage. While she excelled in painting and drawing, Prophet chose to build her career in sculpture, working in marble, wood, bronze, and plaster. After graduation, unable to get into exhibitions or secure gallery representation, Prophet—as did a number of other African American artists of the era—traveled to France in 1922. But even there she struggled in extreme poverty, sometimes going days without food as she worked to complete her sculptures.

Until the late 1920s, her work did not sell. Artist Henry O. Tanner saw her work in Paris and encouraged her to apply for the Harmon Foundation prize (William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes) that she won in 1929. W.E.B. DuBois and Countee Cullen helped her submit to exhibitions in the US. That same year, her sculptures were featured in the Societe des Artistes Francais de Beaux Arts and other French galleries. In 1932, she returned to the United States, exhibiting in New York and Rhode Island where she won Best in Show from the Newport Art Association in 1932.

In 1934, Prophet began teaching at Spelman College, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and history of art and architecture. Later 1935 and 1937, she exhibited in the Whitney Museum Sculpture Biennials in New York City, generally regarded as among the leading shows in the art world. Her sculpture, “Congolaise,” was one of the first African American artworks purchased by the Whitney. Other works are in special collections at Rhode Island College, the Brooklyn Museum, RISD, and the Black Heritage Society of Rhode Island.

A perfectionist who did all her own carving, her surviving output was small. In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in her work with an exhibit in 1978 at the Rhode Island College Bannister Gallery; a scholarly lecture on her life at the New England Women of Color Artists exhibition in 2005. And, in April 2014, Rhode Island actress Sylvia Ann Soares performed dramatic readings from Prophet’s diary. In 2015, RISD established the Nancy Prophet Fellowship, a two-year paid appointment in museum studies.