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Lifting the Veil

Lifting the Veil

Sanford Biggers

As a child, Sanford Biggers’s father exposed him to "Lifting the Veil of Ignorance" (1922), a bronze monument to Booker T. Washington by artist Charles Keck. Biggers’s sculpture "Lifting the Veil" incorporates, critiques, and re-imagines this work and Thomas Ball's "Emancipation Group" (1873), of which a version is in the Chazen's collection. In Biggers’s "Veil," Abraham Lincoln is positioned as the ignorant man being led to enlightenment by the standing Frederick Douglass. This sculpture, conceived alongside the Chazen's groundbreaking "re:mancipation" project (2023), is both a response to the original work, and an important milestone in Sanford Biggers's career. While he has frequently brought together classical western sculptural figures with traditional African masks (as in the "Chimera" series), this piece represents the most in depth response to a single and specific work to date.
Artist
Sanford Biggers
(American, b. 1970)
Title
Lifting the Veil
Date
2023
Medium
Marble, antique quilt, and mixed media
Dimensions
44 1/2 x 36 1/4 x 21 1/4 in. overall
Credit
Carolyn T. Anderson, Frank and Roa Birch, Eugenie Mayer Bolz, Chazen Museum of Art, Class of 1929 Fund, Walter A. and Dorothy Jones Frautschi, Alice Drews Gladfelter, Frank R. Horlbeck, Walter J. and Cecille Hunt, Harold and Margaret Laun, Stanley J. Lenerz, William R. Mitchell, Bertha Ardt Plaenert, and Ruth C. Wallerstein Endowment Funds purchase
Accession No.
2023.7a-c
Classification
Sculpture
Geography
United States

Related

2023, sold by Studio Sanford Biggers, LLC (New York, NY) and MASK Consortium, LLC (New York, NY) to the Chazen Museum of Art

  • Chazen Museum of Art. "re:mancipation." Madison, WI: Chazen Museum of Art, 2024. pp. 7, 165, 184-195, 205, figs. 3, 9, 10, 13, 14

  • re:mancipation: Chazen Museum of Art, 2/6/2023–6/25/2023

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