Edmonia Lewis’ Legacy Two Centuries Later

Mar 30, 2026

Edmonia Lewis’ Legacy Two Centuries Later
By Shantay Robinson

Edmonia Lewis, born in 1844 as a free Black person in upstate New York, emerged to greatness at a time when most Black women in the United States didn’t have the liberty to read and write, much less pursue artistry. At the time, slavery was still legal. It would take an entire generation after Edmonia Lewis’ success for other Black women visual artists to ascend to the relative ranks she reached. It wasn’t until the 1930s that August Savage would show her famous sculpture Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp) which was demolished after its showing at the World’s Fair in 1940. And later in the 1940s, Elizabeth Catlett, who became a citizen of Mexico after her citizenship to the United States was rescinded, would make some of the most powerful sculptures of Black women.

Forever Free, 1867 by Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis is the first African American and Native American sculptor to receive international acclaim for her artistry. After a tumultuous experience in college, she moved to Boston where she was introduced to William Lloyd Garrison by abolitionists who recognized her talent. It was difficult to find a tutor initially, but Edward Augustus Brackett, who specialized in portrait busts, became her instructor. She was a part of the abolitionist community that supported her work. So inspired by the community, when she met the Colonel Robert Gould Shaw who led the African American Civil War Regiment, she created a bust of him and showed it to his family who purchased it. The bust was reproduced commercially and sold popularly. And on that success, Lewis was able to move to Rome to further her learning and career. She spent most of her adult career in Rome where she adopted a neoclassical style working with marble. And she did not shy away from producing sculptures that expressed her African American and Native American heritage. One of her most famous sculptures Forever Free (1867), created four years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two years after the end of slavery in the United States, depicts an African American man and woman emerging from literal shackles of slavery.

Though at the height of her career in 1877, she was commissioned to sculpt a bust of former president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, by the 1880s, the neoclassical style decreased in popularity and so did her work. In 1907, Lewis died in obscurity in the Hammersmith neighborhood of London. A rare exhibition, “Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone,” is currently on view at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts until June 7, 2026. The exhibition then travels to The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia from August 8, 2026 to January 3, 2027. It’s the first exhibition of its kind. There are 115 artworks included in the exhibition from Lewis and the generations of artists she influenced.

In the contemporary moment, Black women sculptors are some of the most recognized artists in the world. The work of Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, and Barbara Chase-Riboud, can be found from the most exclusive art spaces to the most accessible. Edmonia Lewis’ legacy is long and impactful. Here are some contemporary Black women sculptors you should know: Vanessa German is a painter, poet, activist, and performance artist most recognized for her sculptural assemblages. German, a self-taught citizen artist, creates sculptures of female figures that she calls “power figures” or “tar babies.” These figures are made from found materials, often dolls she decorates with cowrie shells, beads, glass, toys, and other found objects. The materials she uses to create her sculptures often included non-tangible items like "the names of all the dead boys that I know."

Artist Considers the 21st Century Implications of Psychosis as Public Health Crisis or, Critical Comedic Analysis into the Pathophysiology of Psychosis, 2014 by Vanessa German.

Inspired by the Kongo’s nkisi nkondi, wooden sculptures covered in nails that offer divine protection, german’s figures, on the other hand, offer strength. Often weighed down by the number of ornaments attached to the figure, they represent the weight Black women carry and endure; but the artist portrays them doing so spiritedly. Her sculptures have grown to include large floor-standing head sculptures covered in mineral crystals. german’s sculptures are based in love and meant to emit healing energy. The artist is interested in using creativity and tenderness for social healing and transformation

Vinnie Bagwell is known for her powerful public sculptures that center on the African American community. Bagwell’s first public bronze cast sculpture, The First Lady of Jazz, was a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, placed at the Yonkers, New York Metro North/Amtrak train station. With this sculpture, Bagwell wanted to honor Black excellence and acknowledge someone who has shaped Black culture. Though not yet completed, one of her most notable public sculptures is Victory Beyond Sims. When New York City removed the sculpture outside of Central Park celebrating J. Marion Sims, the father of gynecology, who experimented on anesthetized Black women, Bagwell was commissioned to create a replacement sculpture. Bagwell’s sculpture centers Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy, three of the known women who were mistreated. In her Yonkers community, she is well-known for her public sculpture Enslaved Africans’ Rain Garden commemorating the lives of the Africans that lived and worked in the area. The sculpture is one of Bagwell’s most ambitions featuring five sculptures depicting the first people to be freed from slavery due to the Emancipation Proclamation. The artist’s sculptures address complex and painful histories. (Above left: L'Satta, 2009 by Vinnie Bagwell)

Victoria Dugger creates painting, works on paper, and sculptures that speaks of themes, including isolation, desire, and visibility. Though these are subject matters that anyone can relate to, Dugger speaks from a very distinguishable place; she uses a wheelchair. She says her work’s focus on beauty and the grotesque, a duality that she describes are, “different lenses for looking at the same thing.” With her art, she beautifies the unsettling, notably creating sculptures of legs that are decorated with bright colorful cloth, ribbons, and ballet pointe shoes laying limp on chairs, extended from space, or forming an archway. She challenges audiences to see how bodies are represented and what we value about them.

Being from the South, she incorporates its heritage in paintings and grotesque imagery relating to negrobilia in her works on paper, but many of her sculptures are very tactile and expressive extensions of herself. With other sculptures she holds up a mirror depicting the beauty of Blackness to the viewer, using unconventional materials like beads and hair extensions. Dugger’s maximalist style is engaging and exciting, offering its audience to learn about identity that operates outside common intersections of race, class, and gender.

Murjoni Merriweather uses sculpture to celebrate Black beauty and challenge stereotypes about Black identity. Her clay sculptures feature hoop earrings and gold grills, lip gloss and natural hair, accentuating how Black people adorn themselves. In addition to shaping the ceramic into phenotypically black figures, she uses synthetic hair to style locs, afros, and braids on to the sculptures. By including adornment to her sculptures, she eschews critics who dismiss them as decorative and elevates the ways in which Black people heighten their appearance. Merriweather creates her own artistic vocabulary that contributes to centuries of misrepresentation when creating Black figures by directly responding to the absence of the Black body in western art. The everyday beauty practices of Black people are elevated in her work and considered seriously. Though her work aligns with classic European bust portraits, the texture with which she shapes the clay gives the portrait busts a visceral quality.

Lettie and Myles, 2020 by Murjoni Merriweather

Lauren Halsey transforms architecture into site specific artworks. In 2023, Halsey was commissioned to create an artwork for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden. The piece was titled, the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I). The 22-foot-tall architectural structure is a nod to Egyptian temple architecture, including sphynxes depicting faces of her loved ones. The structure is tagged with contemporary hieroglyphs from ephemera of South Central the artist has been collecting since 2007. She wanted the artwork to be a lens to see the city through aside from the violence that is often attributed to it. As her family migrated to the South Central, Los Angeles area generations ago with the great migration, Halsey essentially elevates her people to that of ancient civilizations.

The Eastside of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture (I), 2022, by Lauren Halsey

Elizabeth Montgomery Shelton studied under art luminaries John T. Biggers and Caroll Sims as a student at Texas Southern University. By the encouragement of Biggers, Shelton created her first terra cotta sculpture “Mother and Child,” which was then included in the book, Black Art in Houston written by Sims and Biggers. After graduating from college, Shelton studied sculpture in Paris with Martine Vaugel at the renowned Vaugel Sculpture Studio. Born in Houston in the 1940s, Shelton has spent a lifetime as a sculptor. Using African symbols, her aim is to capture the strength and courage of all women. Shelton has had various exhibitions around Texas. While Edmonia Lewis was a singular figure in her time, today several Black women visual artists are redefining what sculpture can be by using unconventional materials, challenging authority, and insisting that Black life be central to their conversations. Edmonia Lewis’ story is just the beginning. Black women sculptors will continue to create groundbreaking work that two centuries after Edmonia Lewis are just as bold and dynamic. (Above left: Neighborhood Boy by Elizabeth Shelton)