Edmonia Lewis # 1498

Caption from poster__      Edmonia Lewis     a rich lady, too came to me and said ‘Miss Lewis, that is a very beautiful statue, but don’t you think it would have beenmore proper to drape it Clothing is necessary to Christian art."  " I responded, 'Madame, that is not modesty in you. That is worse than mock modesty. You see and think only of evil not intended. Your mind, Madame, is not as pure, I fear, as my statue."     Edmonia Lewis early life are uncertain.  Her father was a African American and her mother an Ojibwa Indian who named her Wildfire.  Lewis changed her name to Mary Edmonia while studying at Oberlin College.  At the school, Lewis was accused of theft and of trying to poison two classmates.  Although she was acquitted of both charges, she was not allowed to graduate.  In  1863, Lewis moved to Boston and became a sculptor, specializing in  abolitionists and Civil War heroes.  Forever Free (1867), a marble  sculpture now at the Howard University Gallery of Art in Washington,