A new William Seward statue will be unveiled in Juneau, scars and all

By the time William Seward bought Alaska, he'd had two brushes with death, and the struggles were written all over his face.

First, Seward's jaw was broken in a carriage accident that threw him onto a cobblestone street. A little over a week later, he was repeatedly stabbed in the face by would-be assassin Lewis Powell on April 14, 1865, the same night President Lincoln was assassinated.

Sibling sculptors David and Judith Rubin didn't shy away from reflecting Seward's battle scars in their new statue of the orchestrator of the 1867 Alaska purchase.


A bronzed clay statue of William Seward by David and Judith Rubin will stand across from the Capitol building in Juneau. (Wayne Jensen)

"Why make him look pretty the way he did when he was young, when he'd already been disfigured by the time he came to Alaska?" said Ketchikan-based artist David Rubin. "We don't have to have revisionist history. We can do it the way it was."

Read more: https://www.adn.com/arts/2017/06/30/a-new-william-seward-statue-will-be-unveiled-in-juneau-scars-and-all/