Main content
Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 7
Lesson 8: Sculpture and architecture- Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave
- Hiram S. Powers, The Greek Slave
- William Wetmore Story, Cleopatra
- Thomas Crawford, George Washington Equestrian Monument
- Mission San Antonio de Valero & the Alamo
- Slave Burial Ground, University of Alabama
- Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York
- Olmsted and Vaux, Central Park
- Representing freedom during the Civil War
- Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker
- Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free
- Cultures and slavery in the American south: a Face Jug from Edgefield county
- David Drake, Double-handled jug
- The Little Round House at the University of Alabama
- Snakes and petticoats? Making sense of politics at the end of the Civil War
- The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty
- Monument Avenue and the Lost Cause
- Defeated, heroized, dismantled: Richmond's Robert E. Lee Monument
- Burnham and Root, The Monadnock Building
- Burnham and Root, Reliance Building
- Louis Sullivan and the invention of the skyscraper
- Carrère & Hastings, The New York Public Library
- Mark Hopkins House Side Chair (Herter Brothers)
- Robert Mills and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, Washington Monument
- Shrady and Casey, Ulysses S. Grant Memorial
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker
Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker, modeled 1866, carved c. 1872, marble, 50.8 x 35.6 x 35.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art).
A conversation with Dr. Mindy Besaw, Curator, American Art and Director of Fellowships and Research, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
A conversation with Dr. Mindy Besaw, Curator, American Art and Director of Fellowships and Research, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(jazzy piano music) - [Beth] We're in the galleries at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and we're looking at a
small marble sculpture by the artist Edmonia Lewis called "The Old Arrow Maker." - [Mindy] We know from the title that this is a sculpture based on a passage from Longfellow. - [Beth] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written "The Song of Hiawatha" in the previous decade, and it was wildly popular. Every child in American
schools was reciting it. Everyone would've known
who these figures are. - [Mindy] The figures are
Minnehaha and her father, the old arrow-maker. And he has flint in his hand and an arrow, as if he's in the process
of making an arrow. And she's plaiting mats. Both figures look up, as if there is a presence
in addition to them. - [Beth] Maybe this is a good
moment to read the passage that the sculpture seems
most directly based on. "At the doorway of the wigwam
sat the ancient arrow-maker "in the land of the Dacotas, "making arrow-heads of jasper, "arrow-heads of chalcedony. "At his side in all her beauty "sat the lovely Minnehaha, "sat his daughter, Laughing Water, "plaiting mats of flags and rushes. "Of the past the old man's thoughts were, "and the maiden's of the future." And that sets up the story
of Minnehaha and Hiawatha, who's just entered the doorway and explains the deer at Minnehaha's feet. - [Mindy] The old arrow-maker
is thinking of the past, and she is dreaming of
that romance of the future. - [Beth] Hiawatha noticed
her on a previous visit, thought she was beautiful, and has returned to woo her
and to take her as his wife. - [Mindy] Very sentimental,
romantic, and Victorian. But what it also points to is how this sculpture might compare to other neoclassical sculptures, and especially the way that Native American
subjects were depicted, which were often either defeated
and completely dying out, or pictured as the enemy. - [Beth] There are all these ways that this sculpture feels so of its time. And yet, the artist, Lewis, is so remarkable and different from so many women of her time, that it's difficult to
reconcile these things. - [Mindy] Edmonia Lewis was born to a Chippewa or Ojibwe mother, and a father probably from Haiti. - [Beth] The racism that
she faced was fierce. And she does get herself to Rome, and in Europe found a
more accepting environment for her artistic ambitions. - [Mindy] And what a great place to be, because there's other
women sculptors in Rome. So, she falls in with them, is so successful by 1872 when
this sculpture is carved, she has nine assistants working for her. - [Beth] Americans who
are coming to Europe are stopping by her studio. It's a known place to visit this remarkable sculptor who's a woman, who's both Black and Native American, was compelling and interesting, and brought a sense of,
I think for her patrons, authenticity. Here was a woman who was an artist, but who was part Native American doing this Native American subject. - [Mindy] But to say, "Of course she did
Native American subjects "because she was part Native American," is simplifying it too much. Within the body of Lewis's work, there are some Native American subjects, all from Longfellow or inspired by that, a quite famous sculpture of African Americans being freed, and then many portraits
or sculptures of Cleopatra or other historic figures, even subjects related to religion. So, to essentialize that
Edmonia Lewis's body of work directly ties only to her
background and her race, is simplifying, perhaps. - [Beth] So, we have to think about her identity as an artist as something that is
determined by so many factors, including just being an
artist and making a living and living in Rome at a time when this style
of sculpture is popular. - [Mindy] This is a really
American subject matter for an artist working in Italy. So, there is some appeal there. I really think she was responding to the popularity of the story in the ways that she could
sell the sculpture that way. - [Beth] This was a time
of incredible interest in Native Americans. The idea of the vanishing race, this myth that Native
Americans would fade away allowed the United States to not confront the violence and genocide that it was perpetrating
against Native Americans. And that's where I go back to the sentimentality of the subject. Minnehaha's father is going
to move into the past, while she moves into the
future with Hiawatha. But Hiawatha, in the end, sees European ships and decides to leave. - [Mindy] And then we
haven't even talked about the Civil War, that the Civil War is just ending. She models this in 1866. So, that hope, perhaps,
for reconciliation, for making amends or
starting on a new path, I think that's woven in here too. (jazzy piano music)