Iconic wax statue of Abraham Lincoln melts in Washington DC, viral photo

The viral photo shows the Abraham Lincoln statue’s melted head and right foot, and the legs separated from its torso.

As an unprecedented heatwave scorched the US, a six-foot-tall wax statue of the country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln outside an elementary school in Washington DC melted over the weekend.

The statue, which replicates the Lincoln Memorial, melted as the temperature soared to 37.7 degrees Celsius in Northwest Washington on Saturday. A now viral photo shows Lincoln’s head and right foot melted, and legs separated from its torso.

Sharing the viral photo, X user Kirk A Bado wrote, “Maybe a wax Lincoln sculpture wasn’t the best idea during DC’s first week of summer heat.” The photo shows Lincoln’s head and right foot melted, and legs separated from its torso.

See the viral photo here

Shared on June 24, the photo received 14.5 million views. Reacting to it, a user commented, “I look the same after 16h of work.” Another user wrote, “Even our monuments are exhausted by our politics.”

“Triple digits!! That sounds crazy anywhere in the world where nobody uses Fahrenheit,” a third user reacted.

Virginia-based artist Sandy Williams IV installed the wax statue on the historic site of Camp Barker — which was once a Civil War-era refugee camp that housed former slaves and those freed — in February on the grounds of Garrison Elementary School, the BBC reported. The statue is part of artist Williams IV’s ‘The Wax Monument Series.’

“Traditionally, monuments are made to sit and collect a patina, as they withstand change, in an attempt to eternalize a particular reality. I am interested in visualizing change and building monuments able to keep a living record of activity. By melting these wax versions of famous monuments, people are given agency over these forms that are normally (legally) untouchable,” Williams IV was quoted as saying by Eastcityart in February this year.