The record
Eight segments cut into Breakthrough by Edwina Sandys, dedicated on 9 November 1990 on the lawn where Churchill gave the “iron curtain” speech in 1946.
Sandys is Winston Churchill's granddaughter, and the dedication of Breakthrough came on 9 November 1990, one year to the day after the opening. Ronald Reagan attended. The work is about 11 ft high and 32 ft long; Sandys cut two human silhouettes out of the concrete, so the piece is a wall you can walk through. The surviving graffiti repeats the word UNWAHR — untrue. The site is the point: Churchill delivered the "iron curtain" speech at Westminster College in 1946, and the sculpture closes a bracket opened on the same lawn forty-four years earlier.
How did it get here?
Sandys flew to Berlin early in 1990 and chose the sections herself, from near the Brandenburg Gate. Two further segments originally at Fulton now stand outside the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park, New York, on a base inscribed with the Four Freedoms and flanked by busts of Roosevelt and Churchill.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #203 and by the Berlin Wall Archive as #136.
Artist Edwina Sandys Returns for a Special "Breakthrough" Presentation — Westminster College ↗
The college's own account of the sculpture and its artist.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Berlin Wall sculpture assembled at Westminster College — UPI, 28 September 1990 ↗
Contemporary reporting on the assembly and dimensions.
Press reportSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 203
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 136
Source-reported segments: 8. This is not a separately verified count.
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