A globe turned to Haiti. A glove on the ground. This life-size portrait of President Abraham Lincoln contains intriguing details that can be read as a freeze-frame of race relations at the time of his assassination. The oil painting was ‘hidden in plain sight’ for decades at a municipal building in New Jersey, until our guest Ted Widmer helped to re-discover it.

Travers’ Lincoln is currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery, on loan from the Hartley Dodge Foundation, and courtesy of the citizens of the Borough of Madison, New Jersey.

See the portrait, by W.F.K. Travers, here.