One hundred and sixty years have passed since President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. With the nation in the grips of a bloody Civil War, he declared that enslaved people in the rebelling Southern states would be freed as of January 1, 1863. Three months later, sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) began working on his statuette, The Freedman, a response to the promise and limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation.

This exhibition will feature the work of seven living artists – Sadie Barnette, Alfred Conteh, Maya Freelon, Hugh Hayden, Letitia Huckaby, Jeffrey Meris, and Sable Elyse Smith. It will present their different perspectives about definitions of freedom today. Collectively, they will illuminate how a critical moment in history continues to have lasting legacies.

This exhibition is organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Williams College Museum of Art and is presented by Telfair Museums.