The Law Library is on the 2nd floor of the Law Building (975 Bascom Mall). Locationįreeing of the Slaves is located in the Law Library’s Quarles and Brady Reading Room. As a pictorial storyteller he promoted populist ideologies in his many paintings, prints, and murals. Raised on a farm near Dunavant, Kansas, Curry gained recognition with paintings that depicted the people and landscape of the Middle West. Curry completed Freeing of the Slaves in 1942 during his ten-year residency (1936-1946) at the UW-Madison.Ĭurry remains one of the three most important American Regionalist painters of the 1930s along with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Garrison (grandson of famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison) saw Curry’s preparatory studies and helped the mural come to fruition. Former University of Wisconsin-Madison Law school Dean Lloyd K. However it was rejected for being too racially and politically controversial. Fittingly, Freeing of the Slaves is similar in composition to another mural by Curry depicting staunch abolitionist John Brown, Tragic Prelude – John Brown.įreeing of the Slaves was originally conceived for the US Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. At his feet lay two dead soldiers, one Confederate and one Union, and at his right the victorious Union army marches on. The main central figure ecstatically outstretches his arms and looks to the heavens as the Union flag proudly waves in the background. As the painting continues right, a new day breaks, symbolizing the end of the war and the emancipation of all slaves. Beginning at the left a group of slaves leave their quarters to walk behind Union soldier troops underneath the shadows of a storm.

Similar to other artworks by Curry, the composition is thick with figures. Gail Simpson & Aristotle Georgiades – Under the Surfaceįreeing of the Slaves by John Steuart Curry is dramatically triumphant.Stuart Keeler and Michael Machnic – Driving Force.Buckminster Fuller – Sixty-Strut Tensegrity Sphere.Susan A Falkman – Essence: The Seed, The Flower, The Fruit.Kevin Dobbe – Water Fall and Fibonacci Chimes.

John Steuart Curry – The Social Benefits of Biochemical Research.

John Steuart Curry – Freeing of the Slaves.

Gutzon Borglum – William Dempster Hoard.

Emancipation by Jacqueline Curry