Once considered among the most influential Virginians, Jewish American artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel seemed destined for lasting fame — until he wasn't.
Sunday, Samantha Baskind, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University, will speak at Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art and explore the sculptures, life and legacy of Ezekiel and how he should be remembered.
Ezekiel was born in Richmond in 1844 and his ornate depictions of famous people, including religious and famous artists, resided in public squares and museums around the world. In his day, Ezekiel was “beloved on both sides of the Atlantic,” according to Baskind. He completed about 200 pieces before he died in 1917. In recent decades, however, his sculptures of Confederate soldiers, such as Robert E. Lee in Richmond, and the glorification of the "Lost Cause" mythology of the South have become controversial.
His most famous piece, “Confederate Memorial” at Arlington National Cemetery, was removed in 2023 but is now slated for reinstatement as of August.
Baskind’s talk is a part of the Portsmouth-based Jewish Museum and Cultural Center’s Legacy 2025 celebration of Jewish artists and accompanies a display of Ezekiel’s sculptures, now housed at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens.
“He was like the Andy Warhol of 19th-century art,” Baskind said. After he expatriated himself to study classical art in Italy, “the guidebooks to Rome for Americans specifically said, you must go visit Ezekiel's studio.”
Such visitors, friends and patrons included Lee, royalty and U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant. Baskind said his eventual fade from prominence is multi-layered.
First, his classical romantic style became a bygone in an emerging avant-garde movement of the late 1800s. Then Baskind said there’s a lack of meaningful literature on his works beyond his fascinating biography. Perhaps, most consequentially in recent years, was his allegiance to the Confederacy.
Ezekiel attended Virginia Military Institute — the first Jewish person to do so — and enlisted in the Confederate army. He fought in well-known battles, including the defeat of Southern forces around Richmond in the last months of the war. He later moved to Italy to sculpt, and when he died, per his request, his body was shipped and buried among Confederate soldiers at Arlington.
“Jews who lived in the South lived as Southerners,” Baskind said. “That doesn't mean that every Jew in the South was a Confederate, but for Ezekiel, loyalty to his country was loyalty to his state, Virginia, and that's what compelled him to go fight.”
Jews in the South were shaped by the culture and the “pervasive canard that Jews were not loyal to their country … the way they showed their patriotism was by aligning themselves with the Southern cause.”
As an art historian, Baskind said it's her role to recover these stories.
“I could name dozens of artists who had really horrific backgrounds and terrible values, and we still write about them.”
And she’s been writing about him for years, even when it’s embroiled her in controversy. Some of Ezekiel’s work, including a sculpture of Christopher Columbus in Chicago, was removed during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Ezekiel’s notable sculptures include “Religious Liberty” in Philadelphia, the largest monument to religious liberty in the country and the first major work of art commissioned by a Jewish body in America.
He has two Thomas Jefferson sculptures. One in Louisville, Kentucky, was the focal point of rallies for Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police in her home in 2020. The other in Charlottesville became the site of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in 2017.
“He was really the first major artist in Jewish American history. And that needs to be parsed out. Why was he successful? What kind of commissions did he get? And what did he do for the Jewish community?“
William Wilson Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., commissioned Ezekiel to make 11 sculptures, each 7 feet tall and about 1,500 pounds, depicting history’s most influential artists.
After Corcoran's death, the series changed hands several times. It passed from wealthy Washington socialite Evelyn McLean, who used it as poolside decor, to businessmen, antique dealers and finally to the Virginians who donated the works to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, where it has become the Moses Ezekiel Statuary Vista Garden.
“This weekend's lecture will mostly focus on the Norfolk Botanical Garden sculptures. But I think it's important to also give a sense of Ezekiel's biography,” Baskind said.
After the lecture, Baskind will sign copies of her new book, “Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor.”
Sunday's lecture is at 2 p.m. at the Chrysler Museum of Art, One Memorial Place, Norfolk. Tickets are $18. Visit jewishmuseumportsmouth.org for tickets and more information.
