When Edmonia Lewis presented her five-foot, two-ton marble sculpture The Death of Cleopatra at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the crowd that swarmed around it was the largest at the event. No one in that crowd could have predicted the roller-coaster journey of veneration, disappearance, and chance rediscovery that both the artist and her creation would take through history. 

Lewis was born in 1844 to a Black father and a Native American Chippewa mother. Orphaned at just nine years old, she had to overcome near-insurmountable odds to become the first African American sculptor to achieve international acclaim. Resolute in her desire to become an artist, Lewis moved to Boston, where she began studying sculpture. Eventually, she saved enough money to travel to Rome, then the mecca of the neoclassical sculpture world thanks to its abundance of marble.

Edmonia Lewis, photographed by Henry Rocher, ca. 1870. Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

It was in Rome that Lewis created her masterpiece: a massive marble sculpture depicting Egypt’s last pharaoh at the moment of her death. Unlike the romanticized, peaceful depictions of Cleopatra’s suicide common in Victorian art, Lewis’s version was stark and dignified. The queen sits on her throne, head thrown back, body slackened. An avatar of power even in death, her royal regalia remains intact, but her body shows unmistakable signs of mortality. The technical skill alone required to carve such an intricate piece from a single block of marble announced Lewis as a sculptor of distinguished talent.

After its celebrated debut at the Centennial Exhibition, however, both sculpture and sculptor began to fade from public view. The effigy was moved to Chicago, where it was shown at the Interstate Industrial Exposition. It reportedly failed to sell, so Lewis moved the behemoth into storage. Subsequently, it began a bizarre journey into obscurity.

First, the statue appeared at saloons in the Windy City. Next, it resurfaced on a racetrack accompanying a horse named Cleopatra. The horse belonged to “Blind John” Condon, a notorious gambler and racehorse owner. The sculpture remained in place even after the racetrack turned into a golf course. In the early 1970s, when a US Postal Service facility was built at the location, the sculpture was moved to a shopping mall construction site, where it sat exposed to the elements and vandalism, its history and significance forgotten. 

Edmonia Lewis, The Death of Cleopatra (1876). Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In 1988, the sculpture was discovered by a fire inspector who recognized its potential value. After a series of historical checks, the sculpture was identified and eventually rescued by the Forest Park Historical Society. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, aware of the piece’s immense historical and artistic importance, undertook an extensive restoration project. Years of careful conservation work undid decades of paint, grime, and damage, revealing Lewis’s original carving—or at least as close to the original as possible. Photographs of the original sculpture are extremely rare, so conservators were forced to take some liberties in their restoration of Lewis’s magnum opus.

The statue now resides at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where it stands as a triumph of American sculpture. Lewis herself all but disappeared from public record after 1901. The year and place of her death remained a mystery for many years until a biographer discovered she died in London in 1907. Her legacy lives on through her masterwork, which continues to confront viewers with its daring portrayal of the dignity and humility of death and power.

The Hunt explores art and ancient relics that are—alas!—lost to time. From the Ark of the Covenant to Cleopatra’s tomb, these legendary treasures have long captured the imaginations of historians and archaeologists, even if they remain buried under layers of sand, stone, and history.