The Edmonia Lewis exhibition “Said in Stone,” currently at the Peabody Essex Museum, marks the first time this groundbreaking late 19th-century sculptor has been featured in a comprehensive show of her own. More than a hundred years after unformed marble passed through her hands and into human form, her works are at long last assembled together to speak as a kind of family.

As I wander through the museum, I catch notice of Said in Stone (1867), a work that represents, as far as we know, the first formal visual representation of emancipation by a Black American artist. I can only imagine what she must have felt constructing this work.

The sheer magnitude of her work comes vividly alive in the exhibition. I imagine the sculptures talking with each other, sharing their origin stories, whispering to each other through their polish and pose, all bearing witness to Edmonia’s remarkable mission.

Thankfully, this exhibition is a long overdue opportunity to witness Edmonia’s provenance speaking for her, to assemble sculptures together in a shimmering, chiseled chorus. To walk through the galleries of her works is to witness the battle for the provenance of a nation’s story, a people’s progress.

This grand procession of Edmonia’s work is an act of reclamation—a gathering in her name that shouts through stone and into the eons.