In fall 2019, Amy Gilman, director of the UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, was chatting with international artist Sanford Biggers the night before the closing performance of an exhibition of his work here in Madison. She introduced him to a piece in the Chazen’s collection she thought he would find interesting, called “Emancipation Group.”
This marble sculpture was created in 1873 by Thomas Ball. It depicts Abraham Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation with one hand, while his other hand hovers over a kneeling freedman who is wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist, with chains lying broken on the ground.
Speaking at the unveiling of the large-scale version of the statue in Washington, D.C., in 1876, Frederick Douglass said, “When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors…we may…
