re:mancipation...Artist Sanford Biggers & The Chazen Museum of Art take on the Monumental task of rethinking Thomas Ball’s controversial sculpture
PRESS RELEASE
5/30/21
In challenging times, people have turned to art in order to provide answers, or solace; to disturb the peace, or to promote change. Through art we can access information about who we are and the world around us, reflect on the past and the potential future.
The Chazen Museum of Art is supporting artist Sanford Biggers and his collaborators, MASK Consortium (Founding Partners Mark Hines, P94 & Alicia Hines, P95), in addressing institutional racism by studying, and remixing Thomas Ball’s monumental bronze Emancipation Group, installed at Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill section of Washington, DC. This project, titled "Re:mancipation," will include the production of a counter-monument created by Biggers, a series of symposia, and a documentary that will provide audiences with an intimate look at the Consortium’s directive to address social justice and equity through artistic interpretation.
The original sculpture Freedom’s Memorial (1875) was designed by Ball in response to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865. Ball sought to represent what is considered by most President Lincoln’s greatest achievement—Proclamation 95, more commonly referred to as the Emancipation Proclamation. His sculpture depicts Lincoln standing near a pedestal clutching what appears to be the artist’s rendering of the great document in his right hand. Below Lincoln’s outstretched left hand is a figure gazing upward, on bended knee, still wearing the shackles from the broken chains his former enslavement . There are at least 5 replicas that were later produced in 1879, two of which are in Massachusetts, the third at the Chazen Museum of Art in Wisconsin.
Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at the inaugural event for the monument by the Western Sanitary Commission held in 1876. The Commission was an abolitionist group founded in 1861 to provide medical care to soldiers during the Civil War. While the organizers may have thought he was there to offer praise for their efforts to bring this work to the public, Douglass remarked:
“The Union was more to him than our freedom or our future...The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude...What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”
In 2020, the Boston replica was removed. The same year, while the Chazen Museum was considering what to do with its replica, Sanford Biggers, with whom the Museum has a long-standing relationship, contacted the Museum’s Director, Amy Gilman. While cautioning that hiding the work now would be a disservice to the social justice conversation, Biggers thought that exploring the work and the Museum’s relationship to it would be a worthy endeavor, and that a thorough critique of the work might provide a means of much needed healing for the nation. Gilman agreed and followed a bold course of action gathering a groundswell of interest for the project.
We believe this Re:mancipation project will support The Chazen Museum in its ongoing commitment to the decolonization of its collection, and more broadly, to furthering a more representative understanding of our nation’s history and the history of its art.
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
The original sculpture Freedom’s Memorial (1875) was designed by Ball in response to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865. Ball sought to represent what is considered by most President Lincoln’s greatest achievement—Proclamation 95, more commonly referred to as the Emancipation Proclamation. His sculpture depicts Lincoln standing near a pedestal clutching what appears to be the artist’s rendering of the great document in his right hand. Below Lincoln’s outstretched left hand is a figure gazing upward, on bended knee, still wearing the shackles from the broken chains his former enslavement . There are at least 5 replicas that were later produced in 1879, two of which are in Massachusetts, the third at the Chazen Museum of Art in Wisconsin.
Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at the inaugural event for the monument by the Western Sanitary Commission held in 1876. The Commission was an abolitionist group founded in 1861 to provide medical care to soldiers during the Civil War. While the organizers may have thought he was there to offer praise for their efforts to bring this work to the public, Douglass remarked:
“The Union was more to him than our freedom or our future...The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude...What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”
In 2020, the Boston replica was removed. The same year, while the Chazen Museum was considering what to do with its replica, Sanford Biggers, with whom the Museum has a long-standing relationship, contacted the Museum’s Director, Amy Gilman. While cautioning that hiding the work now would be a disservice to the social justice conversation, Biggers thought that exploring the work and the Museum’s relationship to it would be a worthy endeavor, and that a thorough critique of the work might provide a means of much needed healing for the nation. Gilman agreed and followed a bold course of action gathering a groundswell of interest for the project.
We believe this Re:mancipation project will support The Chazen Museum in its ongoing commitment to the decolonization of its collection, and more broadly, to furthering a more representative understanding of our nation’s history and the history of its art.
PROJECT DELIVERABLES
- High Resolution digital 3D scans of the Thomas Ball Sculpture + select items in the Chazen collection
- Creation of a site specific sculpture
- An online, immersive exhibition to expand the reach of the work and engage a wider dialogue
- Documentary and multimedia ephemera of the creation the project
- Cross-Disciplinary Symposiums + Scholarship
- A touring exhibition experience
MASK Consortium is a coalition of museums and educational institutions sharing knowledge. Its mission is to develop and promote a more complete understanding of human history and culture through the digital preservation of art and other cultural artifacts via 3D, 360 degree, VR capture. MASK develops curricula and programming for events, conferences, and symposia around said works of art. Moreover, MASK works to create strategic partnerships with museums, universities, state and local government, as well as corporations and individuals, who share the goal of fostering connection and expanding knowledge through the preservation and exhibition of art.