What do you call a wax replica of a former president during an oppressive heat wave? A punchline waiting to happen.
Originally installed at an elementary school in Washington, D.C., in February, the six-foot wax version of the Lincoln Memorial was intended as a commentary on American monument culture.
Instead, it became a meme.
As temperatures in the region neared triple digits over the weekend, the replica’s head mostly melted off, turning the towering president into a droopy mess. People sharing the photos online could relate. To them, Abraham Lincoln looked as if he were reacting to an annoying work email or sinking into a couch after a long day. Jokes and innuendo abounded about why he was leaning back.
The work’s sculptor, Sandy Williams IV, said that the online conversation highlighted something special about public art: It is open to interpretation, even when that interpretation is unexpected.
“When I show work in galleries, the population I’m interacting with is a more particular demographic,” said Williams, who uses they/them pronouns. “Whereas public art is just for everyone, especially once it then is on the internet and is becoming a meme.”
The sculpture was not supposed to melt in the summer heat. Wicks are embedded into the wax, and viewers are invited to light one for a few minutes and collectively melt Lincoln over time.
Williams, an assistant professor of art at the University of Richmond, said they used paraffin wax graded to withstand up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures in the region did not reach those heights, but they did set records.
Because Williams has worked with wax for years, they would often joke that their pieces would eventually need to focus on the environment instead of history.
“I didn’t expect that point to be this past weekend,” Williams said.
The work’s official title, “40 ACRES: Camp Barker,” refers to a Civil War-era “contraband camp” that was in practice a Union refugee camp for formerly enslaved people. (Garrison Elementary School, where the replica was installed, was once the original site for Camp Barker.)
The sculpture is part of two series by Williams: One, 40 ACRES Archive, identifies forgotten Black histories in the United States, while the other, Wax Monuments, contrasts the marble immutability of most public art with the softness of wax replicas.
The wax Lincoln Memorial’s new life online was never the intent for Williams, who grew up in Virginia and started focusing on monuments after the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, which started as a protest about the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
But Williams said that they could not be too upset if the memes enabled more people to see it.
“The sex jokes aren’t definitely all I want people to take away from it,” they said. “My hope is with this viral viewing of the work, any segment of the population seeing it will have a moment to spend more time with it and get to know these deeper histories the work is trying to engage.”