Sculptor Edwina Sandys Discusses Art, The Cold War, Life As Winston Churchill's Granddaughter

[Sherman A1]

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/sculptor-edwina-sandys-discusses-art-cold-war-life-winston-churchills-granddaughter

The “Breakthrough” sculpture on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton has layers of connections to the site on which it stands. Composed of sections from the Berlin Wall, it stands in front of the National Churchill Museum, which commemorates the site where Winston Churchill famously described the Iron Curtain dividing eastern and western Europe which that wall came to represent.

But Edwina Sandys, the artist behind 11-foot-high, 32-foot-long sculpture, also has a direct connection to that history: She is Churchill's granddaughter.

Sandys, who returned to Fulton last weekend for the 50th anniversary celebration of the museum, joined guest host Jim Kirchherr on Tuesday’s St. Louis on the Air. Sandys said that she had the idea to make the sculpture when she saw friends returning from Berlin with pieces of the wall after it fell in 1989.

“People were chipping away at the wall, and nobody seemed to stop them,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could go to Berlin and make a sculpture out of the Berlin Wall?’"