Artwork Details
- Title
- The Ethiopian
- Artist
- Founder
- Gorham Manufacturing Company
- Date
- modeled 1912, cast 1917
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- overall: 27 7⁄8 x 11 3⁄4 x 10 1⁄8 in. (70.9 x 29.9 x 25.8 cm.)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase made possible by William T. Evans, William Franklin Paris, and Helen L. Spear
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- bronze
- Classifications
- Subjects
- African — Ethiopian
- Figure male — full length
- Figure male — nude
- Object Number
- 1990.30
Artwork Description
The Ethiopian shows an athletic Black man, posed with his weight shifted to one leg in the manner of the classical sculptures that Arthur Lee admired.
Associated with boxing, this sculpture was modeled in 1912, a time when Black boxer Jack Johnson held the heavyweight championship. Although Lee idealized the body of an African American model, the title, the "Ethiopian," was a term often used derisively by White people, including Lee, in this period.
In fact, Lee later retitled this sculpture a racist slur. Both of Lee's titles and the reserved classical contrapposto pose would have eased racist anxieties that many held about the perceived threat posed by powerful Black male figures like Jack Johnson.
Label text from The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture November 8, 2024 -- September 14, 2025
Arthur Lee was best known for sculpting idealized nudes, such as this figure of an athlete. African American boxer and actor Lester Johnson purportedly posed for this work. It was made following Jack Johnson's world championship title in 1908, an event that undermined the prevailing myth of Black inferiority and countered social requirements for race-based deference.
The word Ethiopian held multiple associations in the early twentieth century--for African American leaders it referred to Black autonomy and pride in Ethiopia's defeat of a modern, European army as it fought to maintain its independence. But the word also carried negative connotations and Lee likely assigned this title to mock Black boxers, whose victories challenged the superiority of the dominant white society. Tellingly, when he exhibited the award-winning sculpture two years later, Lee changed the title to a more explicit racist epithet. By the 1930s, the sculpture had recovered its original title, even though white anxieties surrounding Black masculinity persisted.