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Sculptor Edmonia Lewis' `Cleopatra' revived and on view in Washington:. Heritage Corner
A long-missing masterwork, recently acquired by the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, is the focus of "Lost and Found: Edmonia Lewis's `Cleopatra,'" an exhibition on view at the museum from June 7 through Sept. 22.
"The Death of Cleopatra" was exhibited to great acclaim at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and the Chicago Interstate Exposition of 1878. The two-ton marble sculpture was then practically forgotten for more than a century until it was discovered in a Chicago suburb by the Historical Society of Forest Park, Ill.
"Edmonia Lewis was an accomplished artist and is a key figure in the museum's premier collection of works by African-American artists," said Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Museum of American Art. "We are proud to have played a part in bringing this important sculpture back again into public view."
"Lost and Found: Edmonia Lewis's `Cleopatra'" includes four other sculptures from the museum, which has the largest public collection of her works. Two of these, "Hagar," (1875), and the "Old Arrow Maker," modeled in 1866 and carved in 1872, were displayed at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
The story of "The Death of Cleopatra" begins in rural...