In the online edition of MoMA’s ArtSpeaks program, we invite staff members, artists, and special guests to share personal impressions of an artwork in the galleries. Here, Ford Scholar Brent Hayes Edwards provides a deeper look into how Melvin Edwards’s sculpture The Lifted X captures the turbulence of the civil rights movement in 1965 and memorializes the Black nationalist leader Malcolm X.

Explore our collection work by work as we release a new video each month. Watch the videos and then come visit the works in person at MoMA!

Hear Melvin Edwards speak about this work on MoMA Audio.

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