We just learned about the sculpture of Booker T. Washington by Richmond Barthé.
Another famous American sculpture is Students Aspire by Elizabeth Catlett made in 1978 in Washington D.C.
This is a sculpture of an African American man and woman holding each other and raising their hands toward a circle with a picture of an equals sign in it. There are 4 other circles for some of the different types of science and engineering in the world, like gears for a mechanical engineer, a protractor for a civil engineer, a glass bottle for chemistry, and a circuit picture for electrical.
At the bottom is a tree trunk, and the two students are holding each other and reaching out like branches of the tree.
The sculptor Elizabeth Catlett was born in 1915 in Washington D.C.
Her grandparents had been slaves, so growing up she knew that life had been hard for African Americans.
She tried to go to college at one university, but they would not let her in because she was black.
So she ended up going to Howard University, which was a college where they let black people in.
She spent many years making art and teaching, and later moved to Mexico to be a teacher and artist.
(from: wikipedia - students aspire)
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