An exhibit in the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Art Museum presents a critical eye toward the iconography of a historical statue dedicated to President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves.
The UW Madison exhibit, titled “re:mancipation,” examines “Emancipation Group,” a 1873 statue by Thomas Ball, which the museum has displayed openly in its galleries since 1976.
The statue, which shows Abraham Lincoln extending his hand over a kneeling black man with broken shackles on his wrists, has drawn the ire of Chazen museum officials for its “complex history,” and “problematic subject matter,” according to the exhibit’s website.
