Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone

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.