Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Jessica Lynne

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives.

Edmonia Lewis' Death of Cleopatra was a sensation at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, among both admirers and those who found Lewis' depiction of the queen's suicide too macabre.

When Cleopatra Died Again

The artwork by Edmonia Lewis, the first African American sculptor in the classical mode, epitomizes her immense talent