Voices
Hot seat
Art professor Sandy Williams IV drew international headlines when their outdoor wax sculpture of Abraham Lincoln, titled “40 Acres: Camp Barker,” melted in the blistering summer heat of Washington, D.C. It spawned hilarious memes and, they hope, deeper conversations.
How did you first learn that your Lincoln statue was melting?
I was abroad when I first got an email from someone concerned it had been vandalized. The next day, as I was going through customs, I started getting messages about memes people were making as images of the melting statue went viral on social media. At first I was like, “Man, it’s really melting,” but then all the comments were really funny. It melted in a cool way. There’s no disappointment for me about any of this.
Were you surprised by how much attention the melting statue received?
Definitely. Melting in the way it did and the coverage that it got — I was like, “OK, the project is finished. It had its moment; it did the thing it was supposed to do.” It’s definitely not what I thought was going to happen, but it’s what happened.
How did you feel about all the attention?
It was a great platform for the work and the conversations I was hoping to spark. I’m not sure everybody dug deep to think about it, but the hope is some people had conversations about history or discussions about racial and social issues or climate change.
“I’m interested in starting conversations and sharing agency.”
Your work often explores themes of permanence versus ephemerality. Can you elaborate on it?
I was looking at monuments [during protests in the summer of 2020, some focused on Confederate statues] and thinking how a monument is monumental in size, permanent in its material, and typically singular in its form so that it holds a sort of reverence. I thought to flip that and made them miniature, made them wax, and made them in multiples.
I sell the miniatures online so they can live in personal and private spaces in a way that I think is interesting. Some people buy these because they like Robert E. Lee. I’m interested in starting conversations and sharing agency. While I have my own politics, all my projects are invested in the continued project of reconstruction and emancipation. I think that requires everyone.
How did this theme play out with your melting Lincoln statue?
The melting of the Lincoln statue wasn’t planned, but it fit perfectly with the concept of impermanence.
While the physical statue was temporary, its impact became more permanent through the viral images and discussions it sparked. This incident exemplified how even temporary artworks can have lasting effects.
How do you feel about the unpredictability of public art?
I’ve learned to expect the unexpected. No matter how much I try to anticipate reactions or build in guardrails, something surprising always happens. You can’t control how the public will interact with or interpret the work.
Once I put a work outside, I remove my authorship over what direction it goes in. I think of it like you write a song and put it out there, and then it’s everybody’s song.