CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The work of nearly 7,000 artists from all over America has found a home here at Washington's National Museum of American Art. But none has had a longer or more perilous journey than this two-ton sculpture, 'The Death of Cleopatra,' by Edmonia Lewis. Also, perhaps few of the artists whose work has ended up here has had a more difficult and ultimately more mysterious existence.

This is Edmonia Lewis: Born in the middle of the 19th century, part Chippewa Indian, part African-American, and an orphan. Little is known about this woman who as a child roamed the woods with the Chippewas. Accounts tell of a successful brother who insisted she got to college. He supported her at Oberlin College in Ohio, a major abolitionist center at the time. There her talent for drawing emerged. But it was later in Boston that her desire to become a sculptor took hold. From Boston she journeyed to Rome, home to many expatriate American artists, including several women.

It was while in Rome that she created 'Cleopatra.' In 1876 and �?8, Cleopatra was shown to some acclaim in the United States. Then after taking it from Philadelphia to Chicago, Lewis had to put it in storage because she couldn't afford to take it back to Rome. Museum curator George Gurney told us what happened to the statue.