Brent Hayes Edwards on Melvin Edwards’s The Lifted X
Melvin Edwards’s sculpture serves as both an elegy to Malcolm X and a tool of resistance.
May 26, 2023
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.
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