Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone
On view from February 14 through June 7, 2026
at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
In February 2026 Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, the first major retrospective devoted to the work of Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor of Afro-Caribbean and Anishinaabe descent whose career unfolded across the United States and Europe in the 19th century, will open at the Peabody Essex Museum. The exhibition brings together 30 sculptures from public and private collections, along with related works and archival material that trace Lewis’ life, community ties and artistic practice.
Born in 1844 in Greenbush, New York, Lewis was raised by her Mississauga Ojibwe aunts after she and her brother were orphaned at a young age. They taught her to work with birchbark, porcupine quills, textiles and other materials, grounding her early understanding of art as a form of cultural knowledge and storytelling. That foundation stayed with her even as she later trained in marble and worked within the neoclassical style.
At age 19, Lewis met the abolitionist Frederick Douglass while she attended Oberlin College in Ohio. He recognized her artistic talent and encouraged her to “seek the East.” She began her artistic career in Boston, a hotbed of antislavery activism when she arrived in 1863. People across the city were actively organizing and gathering to discuss race relations in the United States and the unfolding Civil War. Here, Lewis thought, was a place to stake her claim as a Black artist with a powerful point of view.
After early successes in Boston, where she created portrait medallions of abolitionist figures, Lewis moved to Rome in 1865. There she joined a circle of American expatriate artists while continuing to address themes of emancipation, sovereignty and self-determination. Works such as Forever Free and The Death of Cleopatra challenged prevailing ideas about race, gender, and power, insisting on dignity and agency rather than sentimentality.
The exhibition places particular emphasis on Lewis’ Indigenous identity and its lasting influence on her work. A central section features Hiawatha’s Marriage and explores how Lewis engaged Anishinaabe traditions while pushing back against 19th-century narratives that framed Indigenous peoples as vanishing. Her sculptures draw Indigenous presence firmly into the modern world she inhabited, connecting ancestral knowledge with global networks of exchange.
Additional sections examine Lewis’ Roman studios, her working methods and her engagement with religious and mythological subjects following her conversion to Catholicism. Contemporary works by artists including Gisela Torres extend the exhibition’s focus on remembrance, recovery, and artistic lineage.
Following her death in London in 1907, Lewis’ legacy endured in Black communities, yet her contribution to American sculpture has largely been underrecognized. Some of her great masterpieces were rediscovered decades later, while others remain lost. Said in Stone features several sculptures by Lewis that have never been exhibited before, along with cutting-edge research that brings to light previously unknown details of her life and career.
“Said in Stone is an ongoing project of recovery and rediscovery. My hope is that this exhibition introduces our visitors to Edmonia Lewis’ art and life within the communities that influenced her and vice versa, and within the wider history of American art,” said Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum. “There is something for everyone in Edmonia Lewis’ story. We hope visitors will come to appreciate Lewis’ impressive, lasting legacy as an artist who prevailed against all odds.”
Peabody Essex Museum
161 Essex Street
Salem, MA 01970
Opening Day Program: Artist Panel
Saturday, February 14, 2026 | 1–2 pm | PEM’s Morse Auditorium
Whose memory do you carry? Join exhibition curators, contributors and contemporary artists for a reflective conversation on Edmonia Lewis.
Exhibition Touring Schedule
Georgia Museum of Art | August 8, 2026–January 3, 2027
North Carolina Museum of Art | April 3–July 11, 2027
Follow along on social media using #EdmoniaLewisatPEM
Links
- Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, Peabody Essex Museum | link
- Edmonia Lewis, Smithsonian American Art Museum | link
- Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone catalogue (University of Chicago Press, 2026), by Jeffrey Richmond-Moll and Shawnya L. Harris | link
- Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject (Duke University Press, 2010), by Kirsten Pai Buick | link