Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

Silhouette over Harper's print

In this exhibition, Walker’s works are presented alongside a selection of the original Harper’s prints on which they are based, also drawn from SAAM’s collection. For over two decades, African American artist Kara Walker (born 1969) has been making work that weaves together imagery from the antebellum South, the brutality of slavery, and racist stereotypes. Best known for her use of the cut-paper silhouette, she transforms the genteel eighteenth-century portrait medium into stark, haunting tableaux. Walker plays with the idea of misrepresenting misrepresentations, stating, The whole gamut of images of black people, whether by black people or not, are free rein in my mind.” Her work has stirred controversy for its use of exaggerated caricatures that reflect existing racial and gender stereotypes and for its lurid depictions of history, challenging viewers to consider America’s origins of racial inequality. In Walker’s art, the present is defined by the past and the past exerts a savage power.

Description

Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is a series of fifteen prints based on the two-volume anthology published in 1866. To create her prints, Walker enlarged select illustrations and then overlaid them with large stenciled figures. The shadowy images visually disrupt the original scenes and suffuse them with traumatic scenarios left out of the official record. Mangled and grotesque figures escape the boundaries of the anthology’s pictures, expanding into the margins and the space of real life.

Walker’s prints are presented alongside a selection of the original Harper’s images on which they are based. Seen together, the two bodies of work shed light on Walker’s artistic process and her approach to history as an always-fraught, always-contested narrative. Her ghostly scenes assert the influence of racial history on contemporary life and create a provocative dialogue between the past and the present.

Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is organized by Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art.

Visiting Information

October 13, 2017 March 11, 2018
Open Daily, 11:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m
Free Admission

Tour Schedule

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, DC
October 13, 2017 March 11, 2018
The Rockwell Museum
Corning, NY
July 1, 2020 September 27, 2020
The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA
October 22, 2021 January 22, 2022
New-York Historical Society
New York, NY
February 24, 2023 June 11, 2023

Credit

Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Generous support for the presentation in Washington, DC has been provided by Crown Equipment Exhibitions Endowment. 

SAAM Stories

Silhouette over Harper's print
02/02/2018
Kara Walker’s series Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), currently on view at SAAM through March 11, and Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, are two great examples of how art has the power to tackle sensitive and important matters. Although these works are very different, they discuss the same things: history, race, gender, and stereotypes.
Silhouette over Harper's print
10/13/2017
For over two decades, African American artist Kara Walker has been making work that weaves together imagery from the antebellum South, the brutality of slavery, and racist stereotypes. Walker, one of the most prominent artists working today, emerged in the mid-1990s with incendiary, provocative works set in the past but that were very much about the present.
Sarah

Online Gallery

Media - 2008.19.1.15 - SAAM-2008.19.1.15_1 - 70196
Signal Station, Summit of Maryland Heights, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.14 - SAAM-2008.19.1.14_1 - 70195
Scene of McPherson’s Death, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.13 - SAAM-2008.19.1.13_1 - 70194
Pack-Mules in the Mountains, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.11 - SAAM-2008.19.1.11_1 - 70192
Lost Mountain at Sunrise, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.4 - SAAM-2008.19.1.4_1 - 70185
Buzzard’s Roost Pass, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.2 - SAAM-2008.19.1.2_1 - 70183
An Army Train, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.9 - SAAM-2008.19.1.9_1 - 70190
Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta, from the portfolio…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.8 - SAAM-2008.19.1.8_1 - 70189
Deadbrook after the Battle of Ezra’s Church, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.7 - SAAM-2008.19.1.7_1 - 70188
Crest of Pine Mountain, Where General Polk Fell, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.6 - SAAM-2008.19.1.6_1 - 70187
Cotton Hoards in Southern Swamp, from the portfolio Harper…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.5 - SAAM-2008.19.1.5_1 - 70186
Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.12 - SAAM-2008.19.1.12_1 - 70193
Occupation of Alexandria, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.10 - SAAM-2008.19.1.10_1 - 70191
Foote’s Gun-Boats Ascending to Attack Fort Henry, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Media - 2008.19.1.3 - SAAM-2008.19.1.3_1 - 70184
Banks’s Army Leaving Simmsport, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view

Artists

Kara Walker
born Stockton, CA 1969