Cleopatra

The statue standing before you is an interpretation of the two-ton marble sculpture, "The Death of Cleopatra" by Edmonia Lewis, the first professional African-American and Native-American sculptor. Her Cleopatra first appeared at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia (most of the exhibits can still be seen at the Smithsonian). Artist William J. Clark, Jr. in Great American Sculptures (1878) wrote: "This sculpture of Cleopatra was not a beautiful work, but it was a very original and very striking one . . . she is seated in a chair; the poison of the asp had done its work and the Queen is dead. The effects of death are represented with such skills as to be absolutely repellent - and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art." After a shaky art education in America, Lewis at the age of twenty-two sailed to Rome, where she joined other American expatriate artists who found abundant stocks of marble and skilled stone cutters. She joined a group of women described by Henry James as "that strange sisterhood of American Ôlady sculptors' who at one time settled upon the Seven Hills of Rome in a white, marmorean (like marble) flock." After its sensational appearance at the exposition in 1876 where it attracted huge crowds and reactions, it was shown in Chicago and then placed in storage. In 1892 the sculpture was sighted in a saloon. A race horse owner "Blind John" Condon acquired the piece and placed it atop the grave of his favorite horse "Cleopatra." It ended up deteriorating in an outdoor storage yard in the early 1970s until it was saved by a boy scout troop who cleaned and painted it. In 1985 the vandalized sculpture was acquired by the Historical Society of Forest Park. Finally, in 1996, the National Museum of American Art took possession of Cleopatra and restored her to the original grandeur. Edmonia Lewis was last seen in Rome in 1909, her date and place of death a mystery.