Edward Valentine created many of the statues that defined Lost Cause mythology. Now his family's mus
Source: Washington Post
Richmond sculptor Edward Valentine created many of the statues that defined Lost Cause mythology. Now his family’s museum is confronting the legacy.
By Gregory S. Schneider
1/2/2021, 6:00:00 a.m.
RICHMOND — Bill Martin pushed open a wooden door and stepped into a cavernous space filled with faces. Blank eyes stared from shelves on every wall, carvings of hands and feet hanging between busts of people who died long ago. To one side, an enormous white figure of Robert E. Lee lying supine under sculpted drapery.
This was the workshop of sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine. Though he missed the Civil War while studying art in Europe, Valentine returned home to the ruins of Richmond in 1865 and shaped the way generations would view that era of American history.
Today, the artist’s studio is closed to visitors at the Richmond museum that bears his family name — the Valentine. But museum director Martin and others see the workshop as the center of what could be a public reckoning with the racist mythology that Valentine’s sculptures helped bring to life.
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Now the Valentine museum has petitioned the city of Richmond to let it display the Davis statue from Monument Avenue — not in its former glory, but tipped over, dented and covered with paint from protesters.
“Actually bringing that statue back to the spot where it was created has a unique power to it,” Martin said. “When you think about the creation of the Lost Cause myth — it was built around this particular spot in this garden at the Valentine.”
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/richmond-sculptor-edward-valentine-created-many-of-the-statues-that-defined-lost-cause-mythology-now-his-familys-museum-is-confronting-the-legacy/2020/12/31/e9ed90c0-4b7b-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html
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