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Lincoln portrait unveiling set
YOUNGSTOWN
A symbolic portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Canfield artist Ray Simon will be unveiled in an 11:30 a.m. Saturday ceremony in the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda.
The painting, titled “America’s Story,” will be on permanent display on the first floor of the rotunda, accompanied by an explanatory plaque.
The 6-foot-4-inch-by-5-foot portrait to be unveiled in the courthouse is a copy of the original portrait, which is in the permanent collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation Museum in Springfield, Ill.
Among those expected to attend the ceremony are the county commissioners; state Sen. Joseph Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd; Lincoln re-enactor John King; Civil War re-enactors playing fife and drum; and members of the Second Brigade, Vietnam Veterans and Leather Necks motorcycle clubs.
Ian Hunt, a historian with the Springfield museum, will speak at the ceremony, which follows the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination.
Simon said his goal was to show Lincoln “in a light that the American people have never seen him before.”
The fact that the tallest child in the painting is a biracial girl “shows how far we’ve come, and, more importantly, how far we have to go” to achieve racial equality, Simon explained.
The painting depicts Lincoln sitting on the Lincoln Memorial steps, reading from a book to five children of various ages and races, with the Lincoln Memorial statue in the background superimposed on the sky.
Lincoln’s coffin is carried on a horse-drawn wagon in the foreground.
A figure representing Lincoln’s spirit walks along a railroad track on the right side of the painting toward a new dawn for America.
The courthouse installation is the second large painting of Abraham Lincoln to be put on public display in Youngstown in the past decade.
In 2007, the Butler Institute of American Art acquired Norman Rockwell’s 1965 painting, “Lincoln the Railsplitter,” which depicts a young Lincoln holding a hatchet and reading a book and symbolizes the importance of education.
“It’s more than artwork. It tells a story of what Abe Lincoln did for future generations,” by ending slavery and laying the foundation for the advancement of civil rights, Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners, said of Simon’s work.
“It’s telling a story of freedom,” Traficanti added.