Edmonia Lewis - by Jeffrey Richmond-Moll & Shawnya L Harris (Hardcover)

About the Book

""Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" accompanies the exhibition of the same name, organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and Georgia Museum of Art. The catalogue presents sculptures that Lewis produced from the 1860s to the 1890s. Lewis's range of subjects include abolitionist and political leaders; Indigenous themes; and classical, religious, and mythological figures. Essays place her sculptures in conversation with visual commentaries on enslavement and emancipation and consider the popularity of mythology and sentimentality within abolitionist visual culture and feminist neoclassicism. The authors also examine the fraught traditions around Indigenous visual representation, both by Lewis and her contemporaries, while also including reflections on her legacy within modern and contemporary Black and Indigenous art. By considering Lewis's sculptures in relationship with the artists and audiences of her era and ours, this book sheds new light on her networks, cultural impact, and enduring legacy"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A richly illustrated volume accompanying the first retrospective of Black and Indigenous American sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) broke international, racial, and gender barriers as a young artist who traveled to Rome in 1866 to join the leading American sculptors of her generation. She created acclaimed figurative works in marble and achieved great success, but her status as a Black woman of Indigenous (Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation) descent complicated the critical reception of her oeuvre. After her death, her contribution to American sculpture was largely overlooked.

Accompanying the first monographic retrospective of the artist, this lavishly illustrated volume reproduces examples of all Lewis's known works and shares new discoveries that illuminate her artistic vision of community, reform, and resilience. Essays place her sculptures in conversation with abolitionist and feminist movements and consider the themes Lewis's art addressed, including Indigenous artistry, social and political reformers, and religious and mythological subjects.

About the Author

Jeffrey Richmond-Moll is the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum. He is the lead author of Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mystery, and Imagination in American Realism and editor of Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund. Shawnya L. Harris is the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art. She is the author of Richard Hunt: Synthesis and Emma Amos: Color Odyssey.