The legendary American sculptor Fern Cunningham Terry, who died in August, is the recipient of the 2020 Citizen of the Year Award from the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire.
Cunningham-Terry, who lived and worked in Boston, entered a world where there were no African American sculptures. She wanted Black children to look at her sculptures in the future and say, “Oh wow, someone remembered us…wow, we’re beautiful.” That certainly has been the experience of both adults and children who visit New Hampshire’s first public statue of African Americans, created by Cunningham-Terry to memorialize the famous author, Harriet Wilson and her precious son, in the center of Milford’s Bicentennial Park.
Born in 1949 in New York City, Cunningham-Terry spent her younger years in both Alaska and upstate New York. Determined to create public art with figures of Black people, she moved to Boston to attend Boston University and majored in sculpture. After graduating, Cunningham-Terry became a part of the city’s artistic fabric. She taught at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts and later at the Park School in Brookline MA, while she practiced and exhibited her work. According to her friend, artist Ekua Holmes, Fern was determined to bring “durable art to the public landscape.”
Perhaps Cunningham-Terry’s best-known sculpture is “Step on Board,” erected in 1999 in the Harriet Tubman Park, located in Boston’s South End. This was the first statue on city-owned property to honor a woman and is also a stop on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. Cunningham-Terry’s last sculpture, celebrating Black veterans, is slated for installation in Boston’s Nubian Square at a forthcoming date.
In an interview, she said “Black people have their own story to tell, about everything we’ve experienced.” Women and families were the subjects of her artwork in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Milford New Hampshire, commemorating Black life and liberation.
Speaking about her work as a sculptor, Cunningham-Terry said, “It doesn’t affect me, what the art world desires because it’s not my world…it’s not my constituency. I work for people who want to see the story, loud and clear. They want to look at the sculpture and say I get it, I get it, yes, I see.” In this spirit, she changed the perception of the public square by creating some of the most memorable bronze sculptures in New England.
In recognition of her service to the greater community, Cunningham-Terry received numerous awards throughout her career. She received the Beta Beta Boulé Award; an Appreciation Award from the Roxbury Action Program for incorporating African American history into her art; a Drylongso Award, which honors African Americans for combating racism; and the Renaissance Living Legend Award from the Boston Renaissance Charter School.
Through her work, both artistic and educational, Cunningham-Terry stamped an indelible mark on public spaces, from Milford, New Hampshire to Boston’s South End, that are graced by her sculptures, as well on all who interact with her artistry.
