The record
BreakFree, made from the two human silhouettes Edwina Sandys cut out of her Fulton sculpture. The negative space of one work became another, 800 miles away.
BreakFree stands in the Freedom Court outside the library, dedicated in 1994: twelve-foot concrete figures, a man and a woman, emerging from a tangle of oversized barbed wire. It is made from the two human silhouettes that Edwina Sandys cut out of Breakthrough at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri — so the void in one sculpture is the substance of another, eight hundred miles away. The court reads the object through Roosevelt's 1941 Four Freedoms address, and a bust of Churchill faces it across the space, putting the two wartime allies back in sight of each other.
How did it get here?
The offcuts of Breakthrough, the eight-segment sculpture Sandys assembled at Fulton from sections she chose herself near the Brandenburg Gate in 1990. They were preserved rather than discarded and installed here in 1994.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #207 and by the Berlin Wall Archive as #185.
Artist Edwina Sandys, Churchill's granddaughter, to discuss her Berlin Wall sculpture at FDR site — Hudson Valley One ↗
BreakFree dedicated in the Freedom Court on 14 May 1994, twelve feet high, figures emerging from barbed wire, sited near the Churchill bust.
Press reportSource accessed 2026-09-17
Edwina Sandys, Breakthrough — Streaming Museum ↗
BreakFree was made from the cutouts preserved from Breakthrough at Westminster College.
General referenceSource 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 207
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 185
Source-reported segments: 4. This is not a separately verified count.
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record