OBERLIN, OHIO.- Death of Cleopatra by Edmonia Lewis (1845-~1911), the first African-American sculptor to achieve international recognition, has arrived at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, on long-term loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Cleopatra, a life-sized sculpture, is considered one of the artists most important works.
Lewiss Cleopatra was first exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it created a sensation. One reviewer called it "the most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section." Cleopatra was then exhibited at the Chicago Interstate Exposition in 1878, again garnering rave reviews. The work disappeared shortly after that, and wasnt rediscovered in the late 1970s. It was finally purchased and conserved by the National Museum of American Art (renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum) in the early 1990s.
The daughter of an African-American father and Chipewa mother, Mary Edmonia Lewis was orphaned at an early age. In 1859, with the help of her elder brother, she entered the Young Ladies Preparatory Department of Oberlin College, the first college in the country to admit women. She went on to study sculpture in Boston, and then moved to Rome after the Civil War, where she lived and worked until at least 1911. After that, no records of Lewis can be found.
Edmonia Lewiss Death of Cleopatra will be at the Allen Memorial Art Museum through summer of 2003, while the Smithsonian American Art Museum undertakes a major building renovation.
