Links - images, museums, galleries, articles, videos, etc.
New 2013:
The Walters Art Museum of Baltimore has announced the discovery of a new
portrait photograph of Edmonia Lewis taken in Rome around 1874-1876. By
this time she had become an international symbol of 'colored' achievement. The
Walters also owns a copy of her bust of Dio Lewis (find link below).
Congratulations to Jacqueline Copeland for the discovery and verification. Read
the press release here.
The cover of The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia
Lewis is
based on a portrait appearing in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Leslie
visited Edmonia Lewis in Rome in 1867, shortly after the World's Fair in Paris.
This engraving, probably based on a photo, is the earliest known likeness.
The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery AL spotlights an 1868
carving of Hiawatha's
Marriage, one of Edmonia Lewis's most successful images. The web
site includes a comparison by curator Michael W. Panhorst of the six known
versions of the Marriage, which are not identical, and a commentary on Lewis's
art.
America Meredith, a member of the Cherokee Nation, painted this portrait
of Edmonia Lewis, which is now in the permanent collection of the Fred Jones
Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, Norman OK. She wrote that she
talks about Lewis "at the beginnings of Native American art history
classes, because she subverts all proposed narratives and she's one of the first
Native artists to succeed in the international arts arena."
Edmonia Lewis's carte de
visite,
taken in 1870, is one of the displays of the
Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibit, Let Your Motto Be Resistance:
African American Portraits.
For Black History Month, 2012, the Washington
Post highlighted the Death of Cleopatra at the Smithsonian American Art
Museum, in Washington DC.
The newly opened Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, includes a
copy of The Old Arrow Maker. Plan
your visit and reserve tickets here.
Cleveland
Museum of Art acquired a scene from Edmonia Lewis's Native American roots last seen at auction: Three
American Indians in Battle a/k/a Indians
Wrestling or Indian Combat. (No title is
inscribed.) sold at Gabriel's, Nov. 2010.
A portrait of James
P. Thomas, who went from Tennessee
slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur, is at Oberlin College. Photo by Christopher
Busta-Peck.
Photographs by Christopher Busta-Peck of
Rebekah,
1880, or
Rebecca at the Well (private collection). SIRIS
describes a similar Rebecca at the Well dated 1871.
In 2011, researcher Holly Solano discovered this antique photo of the lost Adoration
of the Magi (1883) in a Baltimore MD church.
Savannah
College of Art and Design Museum of Art will provide a permanent
home for the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, including The Wooing of
Hiawatha (Old Arrow Maker) by Edmonia Lewis.
Stark
Museum of Art, Orange, TX, shows a copy of Hiawatha's Marriage carved
in 1874.
High
Museum of Art, Atlanta, Ga., received a gift of Columbus, a
rare carving depicting an explorer and a young Native American woman, attributed
to Edmonia Lewis. The pose follows Forever Free.
Smithsonian
American Art Museum panorama including The Death of Cleopatra, Moses,
Hagar in the Wilderness, The Old Arrowmaker and His Daughter (The Wooing of
Hiawatha), Poor Cupid, and a photo portrait of the artist.
In Alabama, the Legacy
Museum at Tuskegee University calls its Edmonia Lewis masterpieces the sine
quibus non of its collection.
Luce Foundation Center for American Art, Edmonia
Lewis in Italy (video).
Edmonia
Lewis Sculptures, wonderfully detailed photographs by Christopher Busta-Peck.
Bust
of a Woman in peasant dress (contadina) was seen N'Namdi Gallery -- now
the N'Namdi Center for Contemporary
Art in Detroit.
Denise
Ward Brown, "Mary Edmonia Lewis -- Female Sculptor. (video).
Doreen
Bolger presents Baltimore Museum of Art's African American Artist Collection
(video).
EARLY SCULPTURES MODELED 1864-1867
Bust of
Colonel
Robert Gould Shaw
at the Museum of African American History
in Boston MA. marble copy of
Edmonia's first celebrated portrait. A photo of the 1864 plaster bust appears in
The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia
Lewis.
Bust of Maria Weston
Chapman (1865)
Weymouth (MA) Public Library.
Bust
of Dioclesian Lewis Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.
For
all known descriptions
of Edmonia Lewis's first ideal group, The Freedwoman on First Hearing of
Her Liberty (1866; lost) The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia
Lewis.
The
Marriage of Hiawatha at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts;
The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery AL spotlights an 1868
carving of Hiawatha's
Marriage, one of Edmonia Lewis's most successful images. The web
site includes a comparison by curator Michael W. Panhorst of the six known
versions of the Marriage, which are not identical, and a commentary on Lewis's
art.
The Wooing of
Hiawatha (Old Arrow Maker) at Savannah College of Art and Design Museum.
Forever
Free at Howard University, Washington DC, Lewis's second Emancipation work.
High
Museum of Art,
Atlanta GA, acquired this marble group, Columbus
with a young Native-American woman, attributed to Edmonia Lewis .
MODELED 1868
The earliest mention of Hagar,
Lewis's third Emancipation work, dates to early 1868. This copy at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum is marked 1875.
Three
American Indians in Battle a/k/a Indians
Wrestling or Indian Combat (No title is inscribed). It is an ambitious 30 inch. high marble group, signed and
dated 1868. Now on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Minnehaha
and Hiawatha busts at Howard University, Washington DC.
Minnehaha
bust at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Minnehaha
and Hiawatha
busts at the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ.
MODELED 1869-73
Bust
of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (modeled 1869, carved 1871) at Harvard University Art Museums.
Bust
of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1872) at Walker Gallery, British National Museums,
Liverpool.
San Jose
Library, San Jose CA, reminders of Lewis's 1873 visit to the West Coast.
Baltimore Museum of Art
video includes details of Lewis's putti as Doreen Bolger tours the African
American collection.
Portrait of a Woman
with a rose in her hair, at St. Louis Art Museum.
MODELED 1878-1883
Cowan's
Auctions of Cincinnati:
'Veiled' Bride of Spring.
Skinner Auctioneers: Allegorical Maiden,
Spring.
Rebekah,
(1880), photographed by Christopher Busta-Peck (private collection).
Recently discovered photo of the lost Adoration
of the Magi
(1883),
Baltimore MD.
Last updated 04/26/2013
