Poor old Abe Lincoln can’t even keep his head in the afterlife. With triple-digit temperatures threatening Washington, D.C., a six-foot wax re-creation of the Lincoln Memorial hasn’t fared so well — Abe’s head was nearly melting off in the heat. As the sun caused the president to slouch dramatically into his chair, a picture of the artwork took off on social media, where people riffed on Lincoln’s tired, extremely relatable new posture. Also, there were sex jokes.
As the sculpture gained new life online, I spoke with the artist who made it. Over the phone, University of Richmond assistant professor of art Sandy Williams IV discussed the wax piece, its surprise meltdown, and its gleeful reception on social media.
So this is the second time you’ve installed this work — called 40 Acres: Camp Barker — at Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C. Both times it has melted in an unexpected way, right? The first one we made had like a hundred wicks. It was not meant for people to light them all at once, but before we had our unveiling and explained the intended community engagement, people found the sculpture without any sort of prompt. They just noticed it had wicks, then they lit all of the wicks and left it melting for days. So when we came back to have the unveiling, it was already half melted and headless. We were asked to recast and make a second version that only had ten wicks. So the first one was installed in September 2023 and then the second was installed in February 2024.
This time, it went relatively unchanged for months. In the second version, we had little signs that said to only light one or two wicks and blow them out when you’re done. We only had ten wicks and there was only so much those ten wicks could melt. It weighs 3,000 pounds. The wax is rated by the company as having a congealing point of 140 degrees. I previously had joked that when our climate gets bad enough to where we are living in an environment where the ambient heat melts these sculptures, that’s when this work becomes an environmental artwork. I didn’t know that was going to be this summer.
Over the weekend, there have been a ton of jokes about Lincoln’s posture as he melts. To me, it looks like that classic Maxell ad with the guy getting blown away by the speaker. Other people have joked that he’s just overwhelmed by the heat. But the most common riff is that he is receiving oral sex. I was wondering what your reaction to that is. I was reminded of the reception to Hank Willis Thomas’s new Martin Luther King monument. I don’t know, people like sex jokes.
I’m excited. I don’t think I’ve had an artwork receive this much feedback before. So while that’s not the first place I would go with a reading of what’s happening with the sculpture, I’m really fixated on the environmental implications that this project is now unviable in this climate. But I’m here for it.
My methodology around the work is that I put love into making these projects and present them as a sort of gift to the community. I’m hands-off on the authorship of its form or its reading. And what is fun about wax is that you can never really anticipate how it’s going to melt. I could never get it to melt in that way where he’s falling backward. And yeah, I thought one comment was like, “This is me after I get home from work” or “This is me in the Zoom meeting that could have been an email.” I think it’s funny the way an image can be so viral and have so many different meme interpretations.
It looks like Lincoln’s right leg is a little detached. Is there an internal structure to the sculpture, like some sort of metal skeleton that keeps the sections together? The leg is another funny story where someone took it, then brought it back a week later. I accepted that as a thing that happened to the sculpture. It mysteriously came back, but it’s hard to pop it back in the same way.
Could you describe the original intention of the piece, and is there any tension between that vision and how people ran with it online? This artwork is part of the “Wax Monument” series I’ve been doing since 2017. That’s really when I started getting interested in the landscape of public memorials and how they interact with our community. For this work, we chose Garrison Elementary School because it sits on top of Camp Barker, which was a Civil War–era freedmen’s community that we often don’t learn about. I think we learned this history that Lincoln freed the slaves, but we aren’t taught what happened to the early freed communities, the injustices of that period of Reconstruction, and the concept of reparations.
I have no qualms with wherever people take it. I think that is what public artwork is about. That’s what I think love most about public art. The thing that makes me most uncomfortable and the thing I love the most is that I never know what’s going to happen and it’s totally outside of my control. Usually in my more studio practice when I’m presenting at a gallery, I never have those same opportunities to be surprised.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Me too wax Lincoln… meeeee too,” one social media user quipped
Published on June 27, 2024 06:32PM EDT
wax replica of the Lincoln Memorial statue melts during a heat wave in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2024. Photo: Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty
Not even a wax statue that honors Abraham Lincoln is off limits from the brutal summer heatwave.
The 3,000-lb. statue, which rests outside Garrison Elementary in Washington, D.C., began to melt over the weekend amid near-triple-digit temperatures, according to USA Today, the BBC and Newsweek.
Lincoln’s head was the first to start going, then a leg and a foot, per the BBC. Eventually, the staff at CulturalDC, a non-profit organization that commissioned the figure, decided to “purposely remove” the statue’s head to “prevent it from falling and breaking.”
In a statement on their website, the group said that although the figure, which is officially named “40 Acres: Camp Barker,” was always meant to “be burnt like a candle and to change over time,” the soaring temperatures really did a number on the statue.
wax replica of the Lincoln Memorial statue melts during a heat wave in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2024. Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty
“With this record-level heat, Lincoln has slumped into his chair more than ever anticipated!” the group wrote. “All that wax is leannnnnnnning back under the weight of 2024 and the state of our warming planet.”
As for the future, the group said they can’t “guarantee he’ll be sitting up straight for the months ahead,” going on to ask, “but who really will be?”
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Unsurprisingly, the melted figure has become the subject of plenty of jokes online.
“Me too wax Lincoln… meeeee too…” wrote one person posted on X (formerly known as Twitter), while another captioned a photo of the melted sculpture, “How your email finds me.”
wax replica of the Lincoln Memorial statue melts during a heat wave in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2024. Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty
While artist Sandy Williams IV told Newsweek that they expected the sculpture to melt eventually, they weren’t “expecting this version of the artwork to melt in this way.”
“I always joked that when the climate got worse, and we were living in weather hot enough to melt these sculptures, that this work would then become environmental art. I did not expect for that day to be this past weekend,” the artist added.
There aren’t any plans to “repair the installation,” Curator and Executive Director of CulturalDC Kristi Maiselman told USA Today, though it will be removed before school begins again in August.
Maiselman shared that private collectors and galleries have offered to purchase the statue, but there isn’t “a concrete decision on where the piece will go next.”
News & Politics
The artist says the sculpture was meant as a reflection on Lincoln’s abolitionist legacy. Now it says something about climate change, too.
As of Monday, June 24, 2024, this wax Abraham Lincoln statue had melted so much, it was headless. Photo by Omega Ilijevich. If you spent any time outdoors this weekend, you might have felt like you were liquefying amidst the thick air and beating sun. Unfortunately for one wax statue in Shaw, the heat wave was enough to actually melt it.
This heat is relentless. A wax sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in Northwest DC has melted so much, it’s almost lost its head @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/WcIosorabe — John Doran (@JohnDoranTV) June 23, 2024 The statue is an art installation by Sandy Williams IV, a Richmond artist who has made wax versions of historical monuments around the country, mostly on the East Coast. In collaboration with CulturalDC, a nonprofit that helps artists display their work around the city, Williams made a wax model of a seated Lincoln, based on the Lincoln Memorial, to be displayed on the lawn of Garrison Elementary School. The school stands on the site of Camp Barker, which was a contraband camp during the Civil War, where freed and escaped slaves would come to get education, medical care, and employment to rebuild their lives. According to Cultural DC’s website for the installation, Lincoln often visited the refugees at Camp Barker while he was president. The first iteration of Williams’ Lincoln was last October. It contained 100 wicks, and was intended to be burned slowly over time by passersby, who were asked (via writing on the statue’s base) to blow out their flame before leaving the site. But before the statue was officially unveiled, Williams said, a group of people lit all the wicks and let them burn, leaving the statue a dripping carcass of what it had been. Because of the short life of the first statue, CulturalDC, along with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) and the school asked Williams to recast it for the new year. The second statue was installed in February and only has 10 wicks, making it harder for it to melt down all at once. So far, passersby haven’t melted it much. Until this weekend, when temperatures hit 100 degrees, and Lincoln’s head began to fall backwards. Williams, who uses they/them pronouns, said they didn’t expect the wax to be affected by the heat wave at all. The wax they used has a congealing point of 140 degrees, meaning it should be harder to melt than this, and their past public wax sculptures have never experienced this. Williams said they hope observers find deep meaning upon reflection of the melted Lincoln. Their original vision was to juxtapose Lincoln’s legacy with that of the Camp Barker site, and cause passersby to think about the president’s record as an abolitionist. Now, though, they said the statue can also send a message about the effects of climate change. “A lot of questions are around whether my intentions were to melt this thing in this way,” said Williams. “But this is a climate crisis that we’re all dealing with, and I think the piece is reflecting that, despite what our intentions were for the project.” Artist Sandy Williams at the statue’s reveal in February 2024. The statue is intended to be up through September. Quincy Jones, of CulturalDC told us: “We anticipated that the statue would change over time due to environmental factors, and this transformation is part of the installation’s intended experience. Ultimately, the decision to keep or remove the statue will be made by the principal at Garrison Elementary. We reached out to Principal Brigham Kiplinger immediately upon noticing the changes, but we have not yet heard back.” “I’d be fine with letting it continue melting,” said Williams.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – No one can keep their cool during the current heat wave – including a wax sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln. The statue on the lawn of an elementary school in Washington, D.C. started melting over the weekend amid the high temperatures. By Tuesday afternoon, Lincoln lost his head. The art installation has been sitting at the school since February. It was created with wicks and intended to burn slowly over time by visitors who were asked to light and then blow out the flame before leaving the site. The artist says the wax should have been able to handle this heat. The statue was supposed to stay up through September. It’s now up to the school whether to remove it early. Copyright 2024 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.
Source: USA Today, BBC, Newsweek, CNN
