William Edmondson began carving discarded limestone in the early 1930s; by 1937, he had a solo exhibition at MoMA

A retired older man picks up a chisel and begins carving with the limestone debris surrounding him. A few years later, he was given his own exhibition at one of the most well-known modern art museums in the country. With its underdog arc, surprising twist, and happy ending, the story of William Edmondson’s life has all the makings of a great headline, but the truth, as usual, is more complicated. According to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, when William Edmondson began carving around 1932 after becoming a retired labourer, he did not see himself as an artist. In late 1937, he was given his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, becoming the first African American artist to do so.

Who was he before the carving?

Before becoming known to museums, William Edmondson had a long career. According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia published by the Tennessee Historical Society, Edmondson worked as a farm labourer, worked in the workshops of a railway in Nashville, and also worked at a hospital in Nashville until it shut in 1931. Throughout the Depression that followed, he took a string of odd jobs to get by, including working as an assistant to a stonemason, teaching him the basics of cutting and carving stone. He maintained that the idea to start sculpting in earnest came from a religious vision rather than from this training.

Edmondson carved gravestones, standalone figures, and garden decorations using the leftover limestone blocks. He carved animals, Biblical scenes, and figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Nashville teachers, as per the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Most of his sculptures were small due to the irregular shapes of the limestone. However, photos make them appear large.

How did MoMA discover him?

His Nashville neighbour, Peabody College professor Sidney Hirsch, was the first to take notice of his work, passing word to his friends Alfred and Elizabeth Starr, patrons who became early collectors. The Starrs in turn introduced Edmondson to a friend visiting from New York, Harper’s Bazaar photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who photographed him and his sculptures in 1936 and brought the images to MoMA director Alfred Barr.

TK Smith, an assistant curator at the Barnes Foundation, wrote in the exhibition catalogue “William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision” that the word ‘discovered’ suggests that Edmondson was hiding away. However, it was this same network of Nashville neighbours and patrons, the very people he had been making tombstones and garden decorations for, who first brought his work to wider attention.

The words used to describe him

MoMA’s own 1937 press release described Edmondson as “simple, almost illiterate, entirely unspoiled, and happy in his work,” and categorized his sculpture as “modern primitive,” language TK Smith has pointed to as emblematic of how the museum framed him. Many quotes attributed to Edmondson were in fact recorded by outsiders, most commonly white photographers, journalists, collectors and scholars, so they should be approached with some caution.

What happened to him?

William Edmondson died in 1951 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Ararat Cemetery. However, the cemetery records were lost in a fire, and his legacy is based on the hundreds of carvings he created between 1931 and 1951. Some sources say he began in 1930. Per the Smithsonian American Art Museum, over 60 of his sculptures were displayed in an exhibition at the Barnes Foundation decades later.

In an age of creators discovered by algorithms, Edmondson’s story can feel like a familiar shape: years of obscure, patient work, first recognized by neighbours, before reaching a wider audience through a chain of introductions. Whether that’s the right lens for the headline is up to you, but the fuller story is one he built, slowly, in his own backyard.