“Edmonia Lewis and Black Women’s Activism in Civil War Boston”

“Edmonia Lewis and Black Women’s Activism in Civil War Boston”
Caitlin Beach, Assistant Professor of Art History at Fordham University, Affiliated Faculty in African & African American Studies and interim co-director (2023-24) of the Asian American Studies Program at Fordham University, New York City, delivered a lecture centered on artist Edmonia Lewis.
In the 1860s, the sculptor Edmonia Lewis created a series of plaster statuettes depicting abolitionists, public figures, and Civil War soldiers including John Brown, William H. Carney, Robert Gould Shaw, and others. This talk considers how these works-which have often gone overlooked in Lewis’ career and histories of American sculpture-played a vital role in networks of Black women’s craft, entrepreneurship, and activism in wartime Boston.
Caitlin Beach, Bowdoin Class of 2010, is the author of "Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery" (University of California Press, 2022), which was a recipient of the 35th Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Phillips Book Prize from the Phillips Collection and the University of Maryland.
Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition “The Book of Two Hemispheres: 'Uncle Tom’s Cabin' in the United States and Europe” (on view through July 21, 2024).
Recorded on February 8, 2024 at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.