In front of the grandstand of the Harlem race track, now present day Forest Park Mall on Roosevelt and Des Plaines, stood the tribute to the Egyptian queen sculpted by Edmonia Lewis, The Death of Cleopatra.
Mary Edmonia Lewis, sculpted this masterpiece for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. She was inspired to respond to the principles that the Centennial was celebrating including unity and liberty -yet the Centennial seemed ambivalent to the centuries of Africa slavery, the Civil War and the failing efforts of Reconstruction.
The 2,000-pound statue had traveled after the Centennial Exhibition to a saloon on Clark St. in Chicago and later was placed at the Harlem race track as a monument to mark the grave of the track owner’s favorite horse, Cleopatra. The Death of Cleopatra statue had endured hardships- including being painted by boy scouts and later scrapped in a salvage yard before it was found in the 1980’s.
Forest Park’s Conservation of Sculpture and Objects studio director, Andrezej Dajnowski, in conjunction with the Forest Park Historical Society and the Smithsonian, restored it to its near-original state after repairing the nose, sandals, hands, chin, and other damaged areas. It is now on display at the Smithsonian Institute.
Edmonia Lewis, Cleopatra’s creator, was the daughter of an Ojibway woman and a Haitian father. She was the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame as a sculptor.
Her work includes themes relating to black people and indigenous people of the Americas into Neoclassical style.
John Brown medallions, 1864–65
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (plaster), 1864
Anne Quincy Waterston, 1866
A Freed Woman and Her Child, 1866
The Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter, 1866
The Marriage of Hiawatha, 1866–67
Forever Free, 1867
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (marble), 1867–68
Hagar in the Wilderness, 1868
Madonna Holding the Christ Child, 1869
Hiawatha, collection of the Newark Museum, 1868
Minnehaha, collection of the Newark Museum, 1868
Indian Combat, Carrara marble, 30″ high, collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1868
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1869–71
Bust of Abraham Lincoln, 1870
Asleep, 1872
Awake, 1872
Poor Cupid, 1873
Moses, 1873
Bust of James Peck Thomas, 1874, collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, her only known portrait of a freed slave
Hygieia, 1874
Hagar, 1875
The Death of Cleopatra, marble, 1876, collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum
John Brown, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1876, Rome, plaster bust
General Ulysses S. Grant, 1877–78
Veiled Bride of Spring, 1878
John Brown, 1878–79
The Adoration of the Magi, 1883
Charles Sumner, 1895
