{"id":2992,"date":"2025-08-08T00:45:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?page_id=2992"},"modified":"2025-08-08T00:51:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T00:51:53","slug":"edmonia-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?page_id=2992","title":{"rendered":"Edmonia"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bill Banfield\u2019s \u2018Edmonia\u2019 celebrates a sculptor who carved her own niche<\/strong><\/h2>

Banfield, a composer and guitarist who founded Berklee\u2019s Africana Studies department, says the story of Edmonia Lewis is \u2018a true American story.\u2019<\/p>

By\u00a0A.Z. Madonna<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0
Boston
Globe Staff April 30, 2024<\/p>

\"\"
Portrait of sculptor Edmonia Lewis taken between 1870 – 1879.HENRY ROCHER\/THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY<\/em><\/span><\/p>

In the late 19th century, a time when the world of fine art sculpture was almost exclusively the domain of white men, sculptor Edmonia Lewis (~1844-1907) \u2014 a woman of Black and Ojibwe descent, born in upstate New York \u2014 carved out her own niche in marble. Living in Rome, Italy, for most of her working life, she created pieces depicting biblical scenes such as \u201cHagar<\/a>\u201d; busts of luminaries of the day, including\u00a0Abraham Lincoln<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ulysses S. Grant;<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cThe Death of Cleopatra<\/a>,\u201d which caused a buzz at the 1876 American Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.<\/p>

Still, few people know her name, said Boston-based composer and guitarist Bill Banfield, who was originally commissioned to write an opera about Lewis in 2000 by author Toni Morrison. He didn\u2019t even know about Lewis until poet Yusef Komunyakaa asked him if he\u2019d heard of her, he said. \u201cHistory is his-story. It\u2019s never our story,\u201d he said in a recent phone conversation. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re always taught with half the story, because it\u2019s his story.\u201d<\/p>

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Bill Banfield\u2019s \u2018Edmonia\u2019 celebrates a sculptor who carved her own niche Banfield, a composer and guitarist who founded Berklee\u2019s Africana Studies department, says the story of Edmonia Lewis is \u2018a true American story.\u2019 By\u00a0A.Z. Madonna\u00a0BostonGlobe Staff April 30, 2024 Portrait…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2992","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/?author=1"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":null,"rttpg_excerpt":"Bill Banfield\u2019s \u2018Edmonia\u2019 celebrates a sculptor who carved her own niche Banfield, a composer and guitarist who founded Berklee\u2019s Africana Studies department, says the story of Edmonia Lewis is \u2018a true American story.\u2019 By\u00a0A.Z. Madonna\u00a0BostonGlobe Staff April 30, 2024 Portrait...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2997,"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2992\/revisions\/2997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/composersofcolorcollective.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}