No one should underestimate the power of political goods. Our current president came into office wearing a set of red baseball caps that was loved and hated by both sides, neither of whom could deny his power. In Cleveland during a 2016 convention, I saw a man openly crying because a protester stole his phone. In 2024, Democrats I started selling merchandise To portray their candidate as evil is to suggest that he was not, even as his supporters wore T-shirts showing him with glowing red eyes. They lost 31 states.
Sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) found her audience with political memorabilia and rose to international fame in her lifetime, but she was not the subject of a major exhibition until “Happy in Stone,” a retrospective that recently opened at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Encouraged by Frederick Douglass, Lewis went to Boston in 1863 and began carving small wearable medals for abolitionist heroes such as John Brown and Robert Gould Shaw. This was a big enough success that, within two years, she was in Rome, working with a group of expatriate women sculptors to carve ambitious marble works that fused the neoclassical form with contemporary issues such as emancipation, indigenous sovereignty, and religious freedom.
“Happy in Stone” features 30 of Lewis’s sculptures, and is the largest collection of her work ever. Among these He immigrated (1875), a four-foot-tall marble sculpture inspired by the Genesis character, who was cast into the wilderness with her son Ishmael, after being enslaved by Sarah and Abraham. Given Lewis’s abolitionist leanings, you might want to read challenge into her position, but in fact, He immigrated It’s about the flavor of empathy. Two hands cover an exposed breast, as a raised head seeks dignity in a poor situation. Former slaves in contemporary America have become accustomed to defining themselves as “Aunt Hagar’s children,” and Lewis’s sculpture seems to embody their experience, no longer meek but unsure of precisely what comes next.
Portrait of a bust of Contadina (1872) works in the same vein, but depicts an Italian peasant with a hard face and jewels. The piece is noteworthy because it is made in the neoclassical style but moves the subject matter from the religious and mythical to the workers she would have seen in Rome. The rich details in the flower seem to tell the true story: the petals unfold with a complexity similar to a woman’s clothing and perhaps her inner life. Above her head, she holds some cloth, perhaps just laundry, but reminiscent of a crown.
The clasped hands of Gerrit and Anne Smith (1872) brings the focus closer. Smith was a wealthy New York landowner and one of the richest men in America, and he used his money to support radical causes such as John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. His wife Anne even stayed with him throughout his time in asylum, which may have been to avoid prosecution. In the sculpture, her finger reaches his palm, supporting him at every level. Like the rest of the exhibition, it is an exploration of what honorable politics looks like in turbulent times.
“Edmonia Lewis: Happy in Stone“On display at the Peabody Essex Museum until June 7, 2026.
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