Dedicated to the Proposition: Abraham Lincoln

The Radmacher Gallery at Skokie Public Library presents Dedicated to the Proposition: Abraham Lincoln, a new body of work by Chicago-area artist and printmaker Julie Cowan, on view May 18 through August 31, 2026.
The exhibit grows from a question many of us share: who was Lincoln, really? For Cowan, the answer arrived unexpectedly in 2021, when she participated in an artist residency on the Legacy of Abraham Lincoln at the University of Illinois Springfield. There she discovered that Lincoln read Euclid's Elements and that this study profoundly shaped his thinking and writing. His speeches and notes are built on patterns, syllogisms, and propositions: a kind of mathematical architecture that mirrors the structure of Euclid's proofs. That discovery became the foundation for much of this work. Through photo-based lithography enhanced with watercolor, ink, colored pencil, and pastel, Cowan brings together photographic images, ephemera, letters, portraits, and primary texts to construct new meditations on history. She tiles her prints to work within the physical constraints of her press, creating a signature "window-pane" effect of visible seams and discontinuity — an honest form, she says, for how history might be examined today.