Created during World War II, Curry wrote of the mural: “I feel that in this painting I have made a work that is historically true, and I also feel it is prophetic of that which is to come.” While Curry worked on the mural, it was business as usual for the library: underneath the mural, surrounded by painters’ drop cloths, librarians continued to lend books and research assistance to law students at the circulation desk. Amidst the chaos of war and death emerges a large central figure with arms outstretched leading a group of former slaves in a celebration of freedom. The mural portrays Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation through “the contrasting elements of chaos and order, sunlight and storm,” according to art historian Laurence Schmeckebier. Completed in July 1942, the mural was commissioned to adorn the “new” Law Library reading room built just two years before. The mural, which dominates the Law Library’s Quarles & Brady Reading Room, turns 75 this year. John Steuart Curry’s iconic mural, “The Freeing of the Slaves,” has provided quiet inspiration to generations of University of Wisconsin law students.
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