Edmonia LewisAmerican, 1844–1907Old Arrow Maker
May one see it?
Unknown: the museum keeps its counsel
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known. Whether it is on view today, the museum does not say, and we were not trained to guess.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the sculpture
Old Arrow Maker depicts a scene from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). This poem relies on romanticized tropes about Native peoples' lifeways as incompatible with modern life. Edmonia Lewis, an Afro-Indigenous artist who was raised by her Mississauga maternal aunts, capitalized on the broad appeal of Longfellow's poem. Longfellow was an abolitionist, and his work was popular among the same people who were Lewis's primary patrons.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1983.95.179
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 6 days ago
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
