Savannah's Art Museums: Ulysses C. Davis

The Beach Institute has a long and storied history. It was built in 1867 as the first school for African Americans in Savannah by the Freedmen’s Bureau. The American Missionary Association was concerned that newly freed slaves, who would build the building, learned how to read and write. It was named after Alfred Beach who was the editor of Scientific American and purchaser of the land for the building.

There were six hundred students in the first year. In 1875 as the public school system took root in Savannah Beach Institute was turned over to the Savannah Board of Education. Along the way it became the birthplace of First Congregational Church and the Savannah Boy’s Club. After the official closing of the school, it rented the basement of the building to the Savannah Boy’s Club, the first floor to a family as a residence, and the second floor to the city school board. In 1939, the building was sold to the Board of Public Education for $5,000. For the next few decades, it operated as the Harris Street Elementary School. After the integration of public schools in 1972, the building was used as the Harris Reading Center and Harris Adult Education Center.

In 1988, the building was sold to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as part of a four-school package for $500,000. The following year, SCAD donated the building to the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation, who maintains ownership of the building today. The Institute now serves as an African-American Cultural Center and offers a full schedule of programs and three art exhibits a year which feature arts and crafts with an African-American influence. But the backbone of the collection is the wood carvings by Ulysses Davis, a renowned folk artist.

Ulysses Davis was born in 1914 in Fitzgerald, GA. He and his wife Elizabeth would move to Savannah in 1942, where he lived for 48 years, raising six sons and three daughters. He opened a barbershop in which he earned his living and created his art. He sculpted pieces out of wood that displayed fantasy, patriotism, love, religion, humor, African heritage, and historical subjects. He rarely sold his work. He said, “They’re my treasure. If I sold these, I’d be really poor.” But his work slowly became legendary. He displayed his art in his barbershop. Many people would visit not to receive a trim but to see his collection of carved sculptures. His collection would number over three hundred before he was finished. He gathered wood from lumberyards or friends who brought him pieces. He would take a long hard look at the wood and begin carving what had come to his mind without preliminary drawings. He used a hatchet, hand saw, his barbering tools, chisel and knives, and tools he crafted himself.

His most famous works were his carved busts of forty presidents. One of his granddaughters recalled Davis sitting in front of the television on election night, a block of wood in hand, ready to start carving a bust of the winner. When asked how long it took him to carve a piece he replied in his usual philosophical way,”. "I work in time", he said "and in time I'll finish."

As word spread of his work the world wanted to see it.  He was included in the 1977 exhibit, “Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art: 1770-1976,” which was displayed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. “That was one of his proudest moments,” Milton Davis said of his father’s participation in the “Missing Pieces” exhibit.

He presented President Jimmy Carter with a hand-carved portrait, which is now on permanent display at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta. In 1982, a selection of his works were featured in the landmark exhibition “Black Folk in America: 1930-1980” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In the 1982 exhibition “Black Folk Art in America, 1930–1980″ at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., his work was celebrated as important examples of African American vernacular art.

All of this recognition led to his being awarded a Georgia Governor’s Award in the Arts in 1988. Davis would die in 1990. He had longed wished his work would stay together and remain in Savannah. But where would it rest? His family wanted his wishes to be fulfilled. It took an eighteen month campaign and a community wide effort by the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation; they raised over a quarter million dollars to purchase the collection. The collection officially debuted in 1996.

In 2009 a selection of 80 pieces from the Ulysses Davis Folk Art Collection traveled to the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and other top art venues. His work continues to mesmerize and thrill people throughout the United States. When “The Treasure of Ulysses Davis” traveled to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution named the show one of the top 10 art exhibitions of the year for 2009.

“In many ways, Ulysses Davis’ artwork is a paradox,” says Susan Mitchell Crawley, the High Museum’s curator of folk art. “Its sources could range from prosaic advertising images to the artist’s extravagant imagination, its moods from whimsical fantasy to solemn dignity, its forms from lavishly ornamental to radically simplified. Yet despite these extremes, it is always recognizable as his.”

​A simple gift of a pocket knife led to his earliest piece in the collection at the Beach Institute, titled “First Man”. He carved it at the age of 10. That gift would lead to a life of art celebrated around our country. Ulysses Davis remains one of Savannah’s greatest artists and one of the nation’s greatest folk artist.

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