Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend An Inch

Through original essays, catalogue entries on Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s major works,
and an illustrated chronology of her remarkable life, this book reframes Prophet’s
powerful work and legacy.

Contributors
Amalia K. Amaki
Horace D. Ballard
Sarah Ganz Blythe
Jennie Goldstein
Simone Leigh
Sarah Elizabeth Lewis
Dominic Molon
Maureen C. O’Brien
Ebonie Pollock
Mack H. Scott III
Kajette Solomon
Stephanie Sparling Williams
Lorén M. Spears
Kelly Taylor Mitchell

This book offers a nuanced and comprehensive presentation of the life and work of
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890–1960), whose figural sculptures in wood, marble, and
bronze combined the aesthetic concerns of modernism with the beaux-arts tradition. An
artist of African American and Narragansett ancestry, Prophet was the first known
woman of color to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Though she
studied portraiture, she produced a body of evocative sculpture conveying atmosphere
and emotion rather than depicting individuals.

Reframing Prophet’s powerful work and legacy, contributors trace the artist’s
transatlantic career, from Parisian ateliers to Spelman College, and consider topics such
as the art institutions Prophet navigated, the stylistic connections between her figurative
sculpture and the work of her modernist contemporaries, her Afro-Indigenous heritage,
and how she resisted predetermined conceptions of her cultural identity. Prophet
continues to inspire a new generation of artists and viewers today, offering a model of
fearless devotion to her work.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale University Press, 2024
Edited by Sarah Ganz Blythe, Dominic Molon, and Kajette Solomon, with contributions
by Amalia K. Amaki, Simone Leigh, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Lorén M. Spears,
and others.

$45, hardcover, 184 pages. Copublished 2024 by Yale University Press and the RISD
Museum. Proceeds from RISD Museum publications support the work of the museum.