Dana King

Dana King (born March 7, 1960) is an American broadcast journalist and sculptor. She served as an anchor for the CBS owned-and-operated station KPIX-TV in San Francisco. In 2012, King left KPIX to pursue her passion in sculpting and art. Her outdoor sculpture commemorating the Montgomery bus boycott is displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Through research for her work, King finds "historically generalized and racist ideologies that demand a wholesale upheaval of the normative misrepresentation of Black peoples’ emotional and physical sacrifices"

Journalism career King won her second of five local Emmy Awards for her reporting in Honduras in 1998 and 2000, reporting on the consequences of Hurricane Mitch.

In 1993, King co-anchored the debut of ABC's Good Morning America Sunday, before moving to CBS's CBS Morning News (1994–95) and other CBS News programs, including the short-lived syndicated newsmagazine Day and Date.

Art career King announced her departure as a news anchor for CBS San Francisco on December 7, 2012. Although this departure allowed King more free time to pursue her art career, she initially began her career while simultaneously working as a news anchor for KPIX-TV (CBS 5). In the time following her departure, King planned to pursue her passion for art and sculpting. Furthermore, King explains her departure from journalism, saying, "I'm still a journalist, but now my medium is clay. This sculpture depicts a teacher, grandma, and pregnant woman who are standing in a triangular formation. This mural project was made possible by King who donated the space from the building she owns at East 12th Street and 13th Avenue. King explained, "Oakland is in the midst of an economic renaissance, but so many are being left behind. The art piece was the first in Berkeley, California, to honor an African American.

A year after the statue of Francis Scott Key in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park was toppled by protesters on June 19, 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, King unveiled Monumental Reckoning, which now encircles the plinth of the empty monument. These 350 sculptures, each four feet (1.2 meters), represent the first Africans kidnapped from their homeland in Angola and sold into chattel slavery in Virginia in 1619.

Recent work includes a statue of pioneering Negro League baseball player Toni Stone, a bust of Joseph Gier, the first Black tenured professor in the University of California system, a bust of journalist and civil right activist Ida B. Wells, and a statue of civil rights activist Ella Baker. King relocated from California to Vero Beach, Florida in 2022 to join her daughter and grandchild.

Works

Chrysalis A Man for the People, Berkeley, California, a sculpture of Byron Rumford Archangel of the Forest, Thelma Harris Art Gallery, Oakland Waiting on the Wind, Thelma Harris Art Gallery, Oakland Monumental Reckoning, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco