Works of Art

any statue. His concept would take years to build. Frederic Auguste Bartoldi, who shared Labala's vision, was commissioned for the monumental task. Bartoldi traveled to America in eighteen seventy one and chose Bedloe's Island for the statue's location. Though small, its position made it a landmark noticeable to every ship entering the harbor. He envisioned the statue greeting all who entered the port and thus the nation. The first phase

of construction began in France in eighteen seventy six. Bartoldi created the arm holding the torch first. In eighteen seventy eight he finished the head and shoulders. He finally completed the statue in eighteen eighty four. While Bartoldi and his team in France put the final touches on the statue, a crew in the US built the pedestal. In eighteen eighty five. All that remained was shipping the Statue of Liberty to her new home. Workers disassembled the statue and

carefully packed it in over two hundred crates. The Zaire, a French frigate, arrived in New York that June. The laborers got to work erecting the pedestal and the statue. On October of eighteen eighty six, President Grover Cleveland stood before a crowd of thousands to dedicate the three hundred and five foot tall statue. From that moment, Bartoldie's vision came to life. The Statue of Liberty greeted everyone who

entered the harbor. In eighteen ninety two, when Ellis Island opened, immigrants viewed the statue as a symbol of freedom, hope, and a new way of life. It remained both monument and working lighthouse until nineteen thirty three, when the National

Park Service took over its care and maintenance. Though they shut down the lighthouse, the Park Service opened the Statute of Visitors The iconic plaque and poem of the New Colossus by Emma Lazarus became a favorite photo opportunity for tourists, and like the statue itself, the poem, with its famous lines welcoming the tired and huddled masses, had its own story. New York born Emma and her siblings wanted for nothing.

Her father owned a successful sugar refinery and provided his family with a comfortable lifestyle, and private tutors taught them German, French, and Italian, in addition to other subjects. In eighteen sixty six, seventeen year old Emma authored her first book, titled Poems and Translations. Her father loved her work and published the

book to support his daughter. Emma sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the famous writers shared her father's praise and mentored the very talented Emma For several years. She wrote more books expressing her opinions on life. In eighty three, she donated a sonnet to help raise money for the pedestal. The words became synonymous with immigration, yet the poem didn't become part of the statue until after Emma's death. She died a year after Cleveland's speech, and

mostly her sonnet was forgotten. The new Colossus wasn't memorialized until nineteen o three, when one of Emma's friends pushed to make the sonnet a permanent part of the monument. While we recall the names behind many famous works of art, others remained in the shadows of their creations. This is one such story. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows US. What many people born to the lower socioeconomic status at the time. We don't know what year and Monia Lewis

was born. When asked, she gave different responses for different situations. It could have been eighteen forty two, eighteen forty four, or even eighteen fifty four. What we do know is that she was born in New York sometime in July Catherine. Her mother was Afro indigenous of the Ojibwe people and lived in the Credit River Reserve on Lake Ontario. Her father was as mysterious as her birth year. Some believe her father was Samuel Lewis, a valet of Afro Haitian heritage.

Other sources speculate that African and Native American writer Robert Benjamin Lewis was her father. Proper birth certificates were rare at the time, and none appears to have been recorded for her. And Monia had a half brother, Samuel, from her father's first marriage, and even though Sam was nine years older, the two siblings were inseparable for a while.

The children enjoyed a perfect family life with loving parents and time spent growing up in Greenbush, New York, and by the time Edmonia turned nine, however, both parents had died. Sam and Agmonia went to live with their mother's sisters near Niagara Falls. Despite the tragedy, the children thrived. Edmonia continued to make the traditional a jibwei crafts her mother had taught her. Tourists loved her artwork, often buying whatever

Edmonia and her aunt's maide. She ran through the forests in the summer with her brother and other local children. They fished, swam, and explored the great outdoors, even hunted together for the rest of her days. Agmonia recalled this part of her childhood as some of the best times of her life. But life moved on, and one day her brother told her he was leaving. He had caught what people called gold fever. Men across the country were leaving their families and droves, hoping to strike it rich

out west. The moment that sparked the gold rush happened on January forty eight one. James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, caught a glimpse of something shiny in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He discovered an abundance of gold flakes. Marshall originally moved west to work on a sawmill for John Sutter, who set up a colony that would later become Sacramento, and the men swore each other to secrecy so that the

gold would be all theirs. A Sutter had already claimed quite a bit of land, enslaving hundreds of Native Americans who helped colonize the area. The amount of gold the men found made it impossible to hide. Soon, gold miners from miles around appeared for their steak in the riches. Sam Brannon, a storekeeper in San Francisco, proudly displayed the

vial of gold had panned from Sutter's creek. Within weeks, most of the men in San Francisco converged on the settlement to pan for gold, words spread, bringing in people from around the world. In December of eighty eight, President James Cape Holp announced the California had gold. California's population jumped from twenty thousand to over a hundred thousand the following year. Most of those heading to the gold mines in eight were men, known as the Forty Niners. The

men left everything behind, including wives and children. In the men's absence, women struggled to keep businesses afloat the farms running, and raised children alone. Many of the forty Niners found the wealth they saw it holding onto It was another matter. Businesses charged extra pushing up the cost of living. Many lost their fortunes to gambling, drinking, and time spent in brothels that San Francisco storekeeper Sam Brannon never went back

to seek out more gold. Instead, he bought nearly all the local supply of mining equipment, then marked it up and sold it to miners. His business model inspired the saying during a gold rush cell shovels. While Stutter went bankrupt, Brannon became the state's first millionaire. Others also made their fortunes, including Edmonia's brother Emuel Lewis. It's unclear why sam took Edmonia away from her aunts and left her with one, Captain S. R. Mills, But Edmonia fell into a deep depression.

Her parents were dead, her brother abandoned her, and she had been taken away from her aunt's and the place she called home. Gone were her forests with animals and trees. Gone where the fields where she ran and played with other children. She was living with a man she didn't know in Manhattan, a crowded, dirty city, and though she waited for her brother, he never returned home. Samuel headed to San Francisco and opened a barbershop while searching for

his fortune in gold. He made enough to travel to Europe and eventually returned to the States, settling in Idaho. His business ventures failed, though, and some of his buildings caught fire. He moved Montana and opened another barbershop. Fifteen years later, he built a home, married and had a son. Though he never returned to see his sister, he sent money for her housing, food, and schooling, and after four years in Manhattan and Monia left to attend the New

York Central College Upstate, established in eighteen forty nine. The school offered black and white students in education. Higher education was rare for black people, much less women at the time. The school focused on grammar, reading, math, and geography, while the male students took additional science, natural history, and astronomy classes. The women learned needlework and knitting. Edmonia studied at the

school from eighteen fifty six to eighteen fifty seven. In eighteen fifty nine, she resumed her studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. The founders prided themselves on the school's Christian values. Like Central College, they accepted students black and white, men and women. The school also became the first in the country to offer co ed classes. Though many departments offered coed learning, most women's studied in the school's ladies department, earning a literary degree at the end of four years.

Edmonia received a well rounded education, but of all her studies, she demonstrated a rare talent in her favorite subject art. As a woman of color, Edmonia felt at home there. Oberlin had strong ties to the abolitionist movement and took part in the underground railroad that helped enslaved people escaped to Canada. One reverend John Keep and his wife welcomed her into their home, and she lived with them from eighteen fifty nine until eighteen sixty three. The community also

reflected the school's ideals. Both black and white residents lived and worked alongside each other. But while the school in town seemed progressive and somewhat idyllic, black people, Native Americans, and women still lacked equality. Politics and contentions surrounding slavery led to arguments and other conflicts. Several classmates participated in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. Brown hoped to start a rebellion that would result to freedom for all enslaved people.

While the uprising failed, it sparked conversation. The tensions on both sides grew. Oberlin's leaders feared something terrible would eventually happen. They were right. The headlines for February eleventh of eighteen sixty two read that two women at the college had been poisoned and a suspect was in custody. A month earlier, Edmonia had joined classmates Maria Miles and Christina Ennis for

an unschaperoned slave ride with a few young men. All enjoyed the rod despite the bitter cold Afterward, Amnia asked the other women to join her for a hot drink. The women eagerly accepted. Ammonia poured two glasses of spiced wine and handed them to the women. The three sat and talked until the glasses were empty. Maria and Christina bad Edmonia good night and retired to their rooms. Not long afterward, the two became violently ill. The school administration

sent them home to their parents until they recovered. A couple of days later, both women accused Agmonia of lacing their drinks with the drug popularly known as Spanish fly. Though most often historically used as an aphrodisiac in large doses, it's a poison. In retrospect, Agmonia realized that asking them to join her and not participating in the drinking had made her instantly suspect. No matter how much the reverend insisted Agmonia was innocent, she was arrested without any evidence.

The court and jury found Ammonia not guilty. At first, she thought life might go on as it had before, but that was before the second incident. Agmonia struggled through her studies and was preparing for her final paper when professor accused her of theft. The subsequent investigation proved she had not stolen the missing art supplies, but innocent or not, the controversy around Agmonia too much for the school's reputation. Oberlin asked her to leave and not return for the

false semester. She had worked hard, but Edmonia would not finish her degree. Determined nonetheless, to make a career from her artistic talents, Agmonia moved to Boston with financial help from her brother. She mingled with abolitionists and confided that she would love to make fine art. She never told anyone how she came to leave Oberlin. One day she saw a statue of Benjamin Franklin and thought she could learn to make statues too. The three male sculpting tutors

turned her down. Male sculptors usually learned sculpting by taking anatomy classes. First women didn't have that luxury. Finally, she found Edward Augustus Brackett, who specialized in creating busts. Oh With his mentoring, Edmonia began to make and sell claim medallions, and prominent Boston women began to commission her. But it was her rendition of Robert Shaw that brought her fame.

A Shaw, a white man hailing from Massachusetts, had headed into this of a war with America's first all black regiment. He stood by his men when they were ambushed and died with them. Confederate soldiers unceremoniously tossed them into a mass grave, and Mania made enough money on creating busts that she began setting aside money for her ultimate dream

to move to Europe and find more inspiration for her art. Meanwhile, she wanted to help others with the war over, and Monia traveled to Richmond to give newly freed black people basic educations. By August she had enough money to set sail. She chose Florence, Italy, where neoclassical sculpture was popular due to the number of marble quarries, and Monia was pleased to discover that Italy widely accepted women, artists with color and sects were not nearly as controversial. Soon she felt

right at home with local artists and American expats. In time, she traveled to Paris and London for more inspiration before returning to Italy and settling in Rome. At the time, sculptors often paid stone crafters to help with their statues. Admonia locked the resources and did the work herself. She created traditional busts of famous and influential people. However, most of her work comprised African American and Native American subjects.

Native American sculptures weren't unheard of, but Admonia's depictions stood out, and one of her better known works was a series of statues inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellows The Song of Hiawatha. Admonias versions of Native Americans possessed a more respectful reality than the stereotyped and fantasized versions that her fellow artists created. She told stories with her sculptures. In one of her works, an African American couple has broken free from their shackles.

The beauty and depth of emotion in her subjects made her very successful. In eighteen seventy she returned to the United States for a while. She tried to reunite with her brother. Though she made several attempts, he never reciprocated the effort. In eighteen seventy three, she traveled to San France, Cisco for a major art show, praising the West Coast for being much more friendly than the East Coast. The show wasn't as profitable as she had hoped, and disillusioned,

she tried seeing her beloved brother once more. When he still wouldn't see her, she returned to Europe. Edmonia would never see Samuel again. Back in Rome, she created her most famous work, inspired by Cleopatra's legendary suicide, and Monia chiseled the queen's image slumped back on her throne, a smile on her face as venom from a poisonous snake took hold. Her message seemed to say that Cleopatra died

on her own terms as queen. Edmonia first revealed the sculpture during the eighteen seventy six Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and judges were astounded. While some viewers considered the dying queen's image ghastly and graphic, others praised it as masterful. The statue failed to find a buyer when the expo ended, and it went into storage, but a Monia returned to Rome.

She continued to create more sculptures and inspire other artists, and then Edmonia disappeared from history almost Ammonia Lewis died in London on September seventeenth of nine seven. She never married and had no children. In her will, she requested two things, a dark walnut casket and for her death notice to appear in the British Roman Catholic publication The Tablet. Edmonia faded from history until two women dug into her past,

biographer Marilyn Richardson and ROBERTA. Bobby Reno, historian in East Greenbush, New York, where Edmonia grew up, Richardson tracked down at Monia's most famous sculpture, the Death of Cleopatra. It wasn't easy. Edmonia left the sculpture in Philadelphia. Richardson first tracked a twist saloon in Chicago. After that, it marked a racehorse's grave a track. The racetrack eventually fell out of favor

and was sold to become a golf course. The Cleopatra, still on her throne, stood vigil over the changes that came and went. The golf course gave way to a munition site, which later became a center for bulk mail. Through all sorts of weather, neglect and abuse, andedmonious work of art. Endured boy scouts attempted to cover the graffiti with paint. But finally the sculpture found its way to a mall. From there, Richardson managed to find it in

a storage room. The Forest Park Historical Society rescued the sculpture in the nineteen eighties. Ten years later they donated it to the Smithsonian. Along the Way another sculpture surface of two sleeping infants, simply called Night. Along the Way another sculpture surface of two sleeping infants called simply Night. The Baltimore Museum of Art purchased the piece at a Southeby's auction for a hundred and thirty thousand, seven hundred

and twenty dollars. Other pieces were sent to the Howard University Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. The historian Bobby Reno was a devoted fan of Ammonia's, though she knew very little about her life, In fairness, no one did. Dedicated to finding out more about this former Greenbush resident, Reno began searching for Admonia's grave site. Eventually, it was found under an unmarked slab. Reno restored the grave site and added a simple marker

per Admonious Will. But Reno and Richardson weren't finished. They wanted to do one more thing in honor of Ammonia. In Reno sent a request to Oberlin College to write a wrong. The college took their request to grant Aedmonia Lewis an honorary degree before a committee. Meanwhile, Reno lobbied for more public recognition. On January, Ammonia appeared on a U S postage stamp honoring her talent and heritage. In April, the college finally got back to re Now the committee

would not grant the request for an honorary degree. Instead, Oberlin decided to give it Monia Lewis the full degree she had nearly completed a hundred and sixty years ago. On June five, Oberlin President Carmen Ambar stood before the graduating class and awarded Edmonia Lewis her degree in Ladies Courses. Posthumous and Monia, who her aunts and family sometimes called Wildfire, had finally received the recognition she had earned all those years ago. There's more to this story. Stick around after

this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. In nine, the good times of the Roaring twenties came to a halt. The New York stock market crashed, People lost their life savings. Businesses failed, leaving what in four workers unemployed. Many had to stand in long breadline for rations to feed their families. For those struggling to survive, it seemed that no one cared. Banks defaulted on mortgages and evicted families. President Hoover believed that dead all get through it if people just helped

one another. Families moved in together. Philanthropy increased with food drives. Communities came together to help farmers through a sort of collective action that's come to be known as penny auctions. After foreclosures, they bid on the houses, farming equipment, and livestock the banks had seized for only pennies and returned them to the farmers who had supplied their food. But it wasn't enough. Neighbors often had no more to give

than those in need. Without anything left to share, Americans turned to the government for assistance, but Hoover remained unmoved. Americans who had once lived in apartments and houses now lived in makeshift huts made of cardboard, tar, paper, or other discarded supplies. Some dug holes in the ground and used whatever might count as a roof to keep the a now, others took up residence inside water mains and

under bridges. The settlements became known as Hooverville's. The residents referred to the newspapers they used as blankets as Hoover blankets. Empty pockets turned inside out were called Hoover flags. When people wore out the soles in their shoes, they placed Hoover leather, which amounted to pieces of cardboard, into their shoes. It's easy to see that the President's reluctance to help Americans didn't win him many fans. Typically, Americans looked down

on those seeking handouts. People thought taking state welfare was shameful unless it was someone they knew who had fallen on hard times. The general sentiment was that people on welfare did little to nothing to help themselves. Droughts in the Plain States made the situation worse. Without water, crops, animals and people died. Some government officials insisted the situation was hardly as dyer as people made it out to be. If they didn't see it, then it didn't exist. But

a group of bographers was about to change that. In March of nineteen thirty six, Dorothea Lange passed a sign the Long Road in California. Sensing a story, she turned around. The handmade sign read pe Pickers Camp. Lange worked as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. Her job was to help raise awareness of the American farmer's plight. She grabbed her camera equipment and got out of the car. The thin, disheveled woman and her children were friendly enough.

The woman told Lange that she and her children had been living on vegetables from a nearby field and whatever birds the children managed to catch. A thirty two year old Florence Owens. Thompson and her seven children allowed Lange to take several photos, including a close up of Thompson's tired and desperate face. This was the face of rural America. Thompson's portrait came to represent the Great Depression and made Lange one of America's top photographers. She had always loved art,

but especially photography. In nineteen four teen, she had worked for the famous Pictorialist movement photographer Arnold Genta. In nineteen seventeen, she had studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography. After graduation in nineteen nineteen, she had opened a portrait studio. Lang's gift for photography had captured the Farm Security Administration's attention.

They asked if she and other photographers, predominantly men, could document the effects the Great Depression had had on America. Between nineteen thirty five and nineteen forty four, Lange and the others took eighty thousand photographs of struggling Americans and the drought bridden dust Bowl migrant mother. The portrait Lang took of Florence and her children spread across the nation. Florence, an indigenous woman, had lost her husband in nineteen thirty one.

Since then she had worked in the fields for minimal pay and scraps. Americans called Florence the Madonna of the dust Bowl. Without a word, she had described the plight of rural farmers. Lange took more heartbreaking photos of malnourished children in breadlines and farm workers from all kinds of backgrounds, hunched over crops and sparse fields. Her photography captured the moments where Americans, regardless of heritage or upbringing, shared compassion.

Lang went on to say that she strove to create photos that created social change. The day after Lang's photo of Florence and her children appeared in the San Francisco News. The state Relief Administration arrived with food rations. In nineteen forty, Lang became the first woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant for her exceptional talent and creativity in the arts. Like edmonious Statue of Cleopatra, Lang's art reflected reality. Lang

died in ninety five, though she is not forgotten. She inspired a host of photographers to prioritize humanity in their photos and influenced the development of documentary photography. American Shadows as host it by Lauren Vogelbaum, this episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,

visit grim and mil dot com. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.