Edmonia Lewis major show
The Peabody Essex Museum has launched “Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone,” the first major exhibition to gather roughly 30 of Lewis’s sculptures and highlight her role as a 19th‑century African American and Native American artist. The show spotlights her technical mastery and historical impact on American sculpture Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone at Peabody-Essex Museum.
The exhibition opened on February 14, 2026 and is on view at PEM through June 7, 2026. pem.org Organizers list 115 objects assembled for the show, with the Peabody Essex Museum noting the total as a way to place Lewis’s work in wider contexts. pem.org Co‑curators are Jeffrey Richmond‑Moll of PEM and Shawnya L. Harris of the Georgia Museum of Art, who worked together to include newly conserved and never‑before‑publicly‑exhibited pieces. bowdoin.edu Loans on display include Lewis’s emancipation‑era sculpture Forever Free from Howard University and The Old Indian Arrow Maker and His Daughter (gift of Marilyn Jacobs Preyer) from the North Carolina Museum of Art. baystatebanner.com PEM credits major support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Wyeth Foundation, Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch, and Karla and Jeff Kaneb, and the exhibition is scheduled to tour to the Georgia Museum of Art (Aug 8, 2026–Jan 3, 2027) and the North Carolina Museum of Art (Apr 3–Jul 11, 2027). pem.org
