The head went first, then a foot dissolved into a glob, and one of his legs dripped off its torso. The chair buried itself in the earth.
A wire protruding from the 16th president’s neck is all that remains of the head from the 6-foot wax figure of the Lincoln Memorial, which is currently undergoing repair.
The memorial is located at the site of Camp Barker, a Civil War-era refugee camp in Washington, DC, which was once home to African Americans who had been enslaved and emancipated. Camp Barker is now an elementary school.
It was erected outside Garrison Elementary School as a component of Virginia-based artist Sandy Williams IV’s Wax Monument Series.
The duplicate is a candle in addition to a wax statue. Furthermore, this is not the first time it has had problems.
The statue was erected in September of last year at the same spot, but the initial iteration of the wax monument had more than 100 wicks that were lit too soon, liquefying a large chunk of the artwork before the dedication ceremony.
There are fewer and more carefully arranged wicks in the updated model that was installed in February. Below, there is a plaque that says, “Please blow out your wick within 1-2 minutes.”
