A spokesperson says---
“...the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of acclaimed 19th-century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis. 30 sculptures by Lewis from public and private collections across the United States and abroad will be brought together with a number of additional objects in a range of media, giving visitors an opportunity to learn of Lewis’ mastery of marble and her remarkable, storied life…
...Born in Greenbush, New York, in 1844, Lewis became the first sculptor of Afro-Caribbean and Anishinaabe descent to achieve widespread international acclaim. Her mother was a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, an Anishinaabe nation in present-day Ontario, and was known for her creativity in weaving and embroidery; her father was a free Black man who may have worked as a gentleman’s servant. Orphaned as a child, Lewis was raised by maternal aunts who profoundly inspired her as an artist, teaching her how to work with birch bark and porcupine quills, craft textiles and moccasins and use a range of materials to tell stories.
At age 19, Lewis met the abolitionist Frederick Douglass at Oberlin College in Ohio. He recognized her artistic talent and encouraged her to “seek the East.” She began her artistic career in Boston, which was a hotbed of antislavery activism when she arrived in 1863. Lewis saw residents across the city actively organizing and gathering to discuss race relations in the United States and the unfolding Civil War. Here, Lewis thought, was a place to stake her claim as a Black artist with a powerful point of view. The young artist quickly set up a downtown studio and connected with the city’s most prominent artists and patrons, forming networks of support with social reformers and abolitionists. Her initial artistic successes came from creating small portrait medallions of famous American abolitionists, artworks that were popular during the Civil War.
Lewis traveled to Rome in late 1865 to join the leading American sculptors of her generation. There, she continued her commitment to the antislavery cause with works like Forever Free, the first sculpture by a Black artist in the United States to celebrate emancipation. Alongside a vibrant community of expatriate women artists, she also helped craft a feminist approach to neoclassical sculpture. Her most ambitious sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, showed the Egyptian queen defiant in the face of bondage, celebrating female self-determination and the artist’s own fierce independence. Her plaster portraits and vivid, naturalistic stone sculptures depict powerful women, social reformers, Native individuals and religious figures. Through these classically inspired sculptures, Lewis elevated contemporary stories of emancipation, Indigenous sovereignty and religious liberty..."
