William Edmondson Studio and Home Site

Edmondson's first customers were the bereaved. Funeral practice was the opening Southern Black culture offered, and his earliest carvings were gravestones, some stacked geometric blocks, some topped with a bird or animal. He credited the work to divine vision and called his own method stingy, cutting straight into limestone and barely freeing the image. The odd, small pieces of stone he could get kept most carvings to twenty or twenty-five inches. The art world reached this yard through a neighbor, the Fugitive poet Sidney Hirsch, and then through Louise Dahl-Wolfe's photographs.

What the plaque says

William Edmondson Studio and Home Site On this site, William Edmonson (1874-1951) created renowned limestone sculptures in an open-air studio next to his home. In 1937 he became the first African American to earn a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Born in rural Davidson County in 1874, Edmonson made his home here in 1913 and began sculpting around 1932. He drew inspiration from his faith, community, and nature. Major museums acquired Edmonson's work and scholars consider him among America's most important self-taught artists of the 20th century.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 1.0 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.7 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.7 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• Ryman Auditorium — 1.7 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.

More markers nearby

• Ward- Belmont College — 0.3 mi
• DeFord Bailey — 0.4 mi
• Roger Williams University — 0.6 mi
• Hillsboro Theatre — 0.6 mi