Since 1922, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, carved from Georgia white marble, has resided in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, drawing millions of visitors to marvel at the likeness of the 16th president.
A new sculpture of the seated Lincoln has also attracted a fair number of onlookers in the capital but for an entirely different reason - it is melting in a baking summer heat wave.
The wax sculpture - a replica of the National Mall statue — is collapsing into a blob of white goo thanks to the high temperatures. Last Friday, DC hit 95 degrees (Fahrenheit). Saturday and Sunday saw temperatures of 99F, before dropping to 90F on Monday. High temperatures this early in summer typically only reach 89.4F.
The first thing to go was Lincoln’s head, then a leg and foot melted. After that, his chair began to ooze into the ground.
The statue, located outside of Garrison Elementary School in Washington DC, is part of The Wax Monument Series by Sandy Williams IV, an artist based in Virginia.
The elementary school sits on the site of Camp Barker, a Civil War-era refugee camp that housed enslaved and freed African Americans, according to the school’s website.
Williams told WUSA9 that the statue had a congealing point of 140 degrees, meaning it should have been able to handle the DC heat.
The original intent of the piece, according to CulturalDC’s website, was to be a “direct commentary on DC’s history of Civil War-era Contraband Camps”. But now its creator is hoping the melt-down will bring attention to another urgent issue - the climate crisis.
“I kind of always joked that when we got to the point where just the outside temperatures were melting the sculptures, that’s when it’s also environmental art,” Williams told WUSA9.
“I just didn’t expect that to be this summer. None of us want climate change to be progressing in the way that it is. The sculpture now holds metaphors for that was well.”
On Monday, more than 44 million Americans were under heat warnings in the Southeast, the mid-South, and the central and southern Plains, from South Dakota to Texas. Parts of the South and Southern California were also under heat warnings.
The human-driven climate crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels is making extreme heat events more frequent and more extreme around the world, including in the US, a fact made apparent by the melting visage of the wax Lincoln.
Specialists are attempting to repair the sculpture even as the temperatures remain in the nineties. Lincoln's wax head is expected to be reattached sometime this week.
Williams said that the wax Lincoln was supposed to remain at the elementary school through September, but whether or not it stays will be up to the school’s principal.
