First Major Edmonia Lewis Retrospective Opens at Georgia Museum of Art

Key facts

• "Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone" is the first major retrospective of the artist, on view at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens through January 3, 2027.
• The exhibition features approximately thirty sculptures, contextualized by paintings, photographs, books, archival documents, Indigenous belongings, and works by other artists.
• Curators are Jeffrey Richmond-Moll and Shawnya L. Harris.
• Lewis was born in 1844 to a Black father and a mother of Mississauga Ojibwe and African descent; she attended Oberlin College, where accusations of poisoning led to a brutal attack by a white mob.
• By 1865 Lewis had joined Boston's abolitionist circles, and she later established a successful career as a sculptor in Rome.
• Key works include Forever Free (1867), Hiawatha's Marriage (1870), Spring (1880), and The Death of Cleopatra (1876).
• The Death of Cleopatra vanished for years and was eventually found at a racetrack, where it had marked a horse's grave.
• A gallery uses casts and 3D reproductions to explain Lewis's sculptural methods, and visitors can interact with a digital 3-D rendering of The Death of Cleopatra.