Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation

One hundred and sixty years have passed since President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. With the nation in the grips of a bloody Civil War, he declared that enslaved people in the rebelling Southern states would be freed as of January 1, 1863. Three months later, sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) began working on his statuette, 'The Freedman,' a response to the promise and limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation. This exhibition will feature the work of seven living artists and their different perspectives about definitions of freedom today.