As Davidson College continues to reckon publicly with its historical ties to enslavement and racial exploitation, few people have been as closely involved in shaping that work as Lia Newman. A key staff liaison on the college’s Special Committee on Commemoration, Newman helped guide the development of With These Hands and the activation of Oak Row, not simply as memorials, but as living cultural spaces. We spoke with her about why art mattered, how the site came together, and what she hopes endures.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

How did the idea for With These Hands first take shape?
The sculpture really grew out of the Commission on Race and Slavery, which the college launched in 2017. One of the commission’s recommendations was a visible acknowledgment of Davidson’s history with enslavement and exploitation. When the Board formed a special committee to carry that forward, it was clear early on that this couldn’t just be a plaque or a report, it needed to be something people could encounter, emotionally and physically.

Why was art such an important part of that acknowledgment?
Art has a way of holding complexity. It doesn’t flatten history or resolve it neatly. Having a sculptor and a gallery director on the committee signaled that this could be something more than an architectural marker. We wanted a space that could change people, where you leave differently than you arrived. Art can do that in ways other forms sometimes can’t.

The site itself feels very intentional. What guided that decision?
We spent a long day walking campus and thinking carefully about where this belonged. Historic adjacency mattered. The buildings nearby were constructed in the 1830s with bricks made by enslaved labor. You can still see fingerprints in them. But visibility mattered just as much. This site is right on Main Street. It says: you are welcome here. This history belongs to the wider community, not just the college.

What do the hands themselves represent to you?
They’re literal, but they’re also symbolic. Yes, enslaved people built this campus with their hands, but they also cared for students, cooked meals, cleaned spaces, nurtured people for generations. Those gestures were rarely acknowledged. The hands hold all of that: labor, care, presence. They’re open, not clenched. They invite you in.

How does Oak Row expand that experience?
The sculpture can’t tell the full story and it shouldn’t try to. Oak Row allows us to go deeper. It’s where names, research, and descendant histories live and continue to grow. That work is ongoing. This isn’t a finished project; it’s a commitment.

What has surprised you most about how people interact with the site?
People touch it. All the time. And that tells me everything. There’s an instinct to connect physically to place your hand where someone else’s once was. It’s emotional, and it’s human. That’s exactly what we hoped for.

Looking decades ahead, what do you hope this space communicates?
Art becomes a record of who we were and what we valued. I hope this stands as evidence that we were trying to tell the truth, to acknowledge people who were erased, and to create a different future. And I also hope that, years from now, the urgency around this history feels different because society has changed for the better.