"Edmonia Lewis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: New Insights"

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, in collaboration with Howard University, presents the virtual program "Edmonia Lewis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: New Insights." This webinar is presented in conjunction with Poetic Truths: Hawthorne, Longfellow, and American Visual Culture, 1840-1880, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through July 20, 2025.

Speakers: 

Shawnya L. Harris, PhD, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, PhD, George Putnam Curator of American Art, Peabody Essex Museum, curators of the exhibition Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, opening at the Peabody Essex Museum in February 2026, will offer insights into new discoveries and avenues for research of Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), the first sculptor of Anishinaabe/Ojibwe and African American heritage to receive international recognition.
  
David R. Daly, Curator, Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site will highlight the relationship between Edmonia Lewis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who met when the poet visited Rome, Italy, in 1868-1869 and Lewis created his marble bust. It was soon acquired by Harvard University, where Longfellow taught from 1836 to 1854. 
 
Benjamin G. Pokross, PhD, Mellon Fellow, Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site will present "Performing Hiawatha: Black and Indigenous Adaptations of Longfellow's Poem." One of the most famous poems in the nineteenth century, "The Song of Hiawatha" spread cliched ideas about Indigenous culture and disappearance. Its popularity, however, made it available for reappropriation and transformation by the very people it stereotyped and ignored. Pokross considers the poem's performance history from London, England, to the Great Lakes, and how Black and Indigenous actors repurposed Hiawatha to assert their own histories. Dr. Pokross received his PhD in 2023 from Yale University, writing a dissertation on popular genres of historical writing in the nineteenth century. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Tulsa, and with the Warrior-Scholar Project. 

Zoom Link: https://bowdoin.zoom.us/j/94283206678

Image: Edmonia Lewis (American, 1844–1907), Minnehaha, 1868. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. 

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