George Washington 1781

This is Louis Jacques Pilon’s marble bust of George Washington. It exists as an artifact of the late 18th century, a moment of revolution and nation-building. Consider the context: Washington, the celebrated general and first president, becomes a symbol, an ideal of republican virtue. Pilon, a French sculptor, translates this persona into marble, a medium associated with permanence and authority. But what does it mean to immortalize a man in the midst of a revolution predicated on ideals of equality and liberty, when these rights were far from universally applied? The bust represents the complex intersection of power, identity, and representation. Who gets remembered and how are they remembered? Whose stories are deemed worthy of being carved in stone? Pilon's sculpture invites us to reflect on the selective nature of history and the ongoing struggle to expand the circle of representation.