You’d be forgiven for not knowing the name Edmonia Lewis. The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is set on changing that with Said in Stone (February 14–June 7, 2026), the first retrospective for the 19th-century Black and Native American sculptor, an artist who broke boundaries everywhere she turned.
Her story is almost as astounding as her marble masterpieces: She was born in 1844—her father was a free Black man and her mother was a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation—and raised by her maternal aunts who nurtured her talent. At 19 as a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, she met Frederick Douglass who encouraged her to head east and pursue art. After studying in Boston and joining a community of abolitionists and activists, she traveled to Rome and perfected her neoclassical style.
Her works spoke to the times. Her most well-known piece, Forever Free, depicts a triumphant man and woman broken free of their chains and was the first sculpture by a Black American that celebrated emancipation. “This show not only opens up the world of antislavery activism that Lewis supported through her art, but also provides a much broader picture of her career, putting her art into conversation for the first time with her Black and Indigenous ancestry, her commitment to the dignity of women, and her deep religious faith,” says Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, PEM’s George Putnam Curator of American Art and exhibition co-curator.
Lewis’s works include Portrait Bust of a Contadina, 1872 (left), and Forever Free, 1867 (right).
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky (L); Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (R)
Though Lewis did find fame in her lifetime, quite a feat, many of her sculptures were lost (one of her most celebrated, Death of Cleopatra, was found at a Chicago salvage yard in the 1980s after decades serving as a horse’s headstone at a racetrack) and her name was mostly forgotten over time.
“This exhibition represents an ongoing project of recovery—of piecing together fragments and listening for further details when the historical record appears silent,” says Richmond-Moll, who spent seven years bringing together the 30 Lewis sculptures, as well as numerous personal objects, including letters and photographs, that make up the exhibition, finally telling Lewis’s story in full.
The PEM made many discoveries during this research period, turning up never-before-exhibited sculptures, including one of the first Lewis ever displayed publicly: a bust of Civil War colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who famously led the all-Black Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
Richmond-Moll was also heartened to learn that numerous artists and activists over the years worked to keep Lewis’s story alive—everyone from early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who advocated for Lewis’s art to be included in a 1927 show at the Art Institute of Chicago focused on the Harlem Renaissance, to Afro-Cuban photographic artist Gisela Torres, who has honored Lewis with her series, Looking for Edmonia, which is included in the PEM show. “This exhibition stands on the shoulders of these giants,” he says.
Lewis’s art conveys powerful messages—stories of emancipation, Indigenous sovereignty, and religious freedom—that are just as relevant today as they were 150 years ago. Says Richmond-Moll: “We firmly believe that visitors to Said in Stone will discover that there is something for everyone in Lewis’s story and her sculptures—the works of a magnificent artist who prevailed against all odds.”
Make a weekend of it
- After a visit to the Peabody Essex Museum, head to Boston for a long weekend of checking out century-old bookshops, cocktails decided by dice, and, of course, lobster.
