NARRATOR: When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it inspired this sculpture of a formerly enslaved Black man holding broken manacles and looking up, toward a new future.

HUGH HAYDEN: I’m struck by his sense of agency, and that he’s somewhat in motion. Is he sitting down, or is he getting up? I think often the museum text will say he's getting up, but I also like the idea that he's sitting down to rest.

NARRATOR: This sculpture inspired artist Hugh Hayden to respond–this time exploring the ongoing resonance of issues concerning enslavement and its legacy.

HUGH HAYDEN: Within my greater body of work, I explore forms and ideas related to inhabiting the American dream, often using wood furniture, whether it’s an Adirondack chair which might denote leisure and rest, or school desks that might suggest education, and upward mobility.

I’ve made another sculpture based off of a 3D scan of this work where it’s the same man except we’ve given him contemporary clothing like cargo shorts and a button up fishing shirt and flip flops, and the stump has been remade as a wooden Adirondack chair. Again is he relaxing, or is he getting up to do something because he has agency?

NARRATOR: For Hayden, to be an artist—whether in the 19th or 21st century—is to explore ideas beyond the depicted moment, with a personal and visceral response.

HUGH HAYDEN: You're not a scientist. You're not a historian. You’re conveying this mixture of history and emotion in a skillful and creative way to represent an idea. Ward is doing that at that time using those ingredients and how they made sense to him, and now I’m remixing that again, making my own recipe to further conversation and dialogue.