President Abraham Lincoln’s wax statue melted as Washington’s temperatures soared into triple digits over the weekend.
This 6-foot statue was installed in February on the campus of Garrison Elementary School in Northwest Washington.
Crafted by Richmond artist Sandy Williams IV, the memorial aims to highlight the Civil War era and its aftermath.
Early Monday, Lincoln’s head was removed for safekeeping, with plans to reattach it on Tuesday.
This is the second time the 3,000-pound Lincoln candle has melted. Before its unveiling in September, someone lit more than half of its 100 wicks and left the piece unattended.
Ahead of its reinstallation in February, precautions included reducing the number of wicks to 10, with visitors instructed to light them briefly and then extinguish them.
“The idea was that the ambient temperature, unless it got to 140 degrees, wouldn’t melt the sculpture,” Williams, a professor of art at the University of Richmond, told the Washington Post. “But yeah, I’m not sure that the company ever tried just putting a block of it outside for days in a hundred-plus-degree weather.”
The statue, “40 ACRES: Camp Barker,” commemorates the location of Camp Barker, a refuge for slaves who escaped seeking freedom during the Civil War, presumed to have been visited by Lincoln several times.
It is also part of Williams’s wax archives series, delving into the era during and after the Civil War.
Kristi Maiselman, executive director and curator of CulturalDC, said the artwork commissioned by the nonprofit group cost $150,000, funded through a mix of private and public resources. This also covered the replacement statue cost after the first Lincoln was burned.
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“I think personally, it’s a great platform for this work to spark conversations, not only about the historical significance of the site and of Lincoln, but about what’s going on in the world as it relates to climate change,” Maiselman said.
The statue was scheduled to remain in its current location until September, with CulturalDC and Williams hoping to repair and possibly keep it there, but a final decision remains to be made pending community consultation.
