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.
A photograph of a woman with short brown hair and glasses.
Ryan Linthicum
Public Programs Assistant
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

Kara Walker, Signal Station, Summit of Maryland Heights, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.15, © 2005 Kara Walker
Signal Station, Summit of Maryland Heights, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Scene of McPherson's Death, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.14, © 2005 Kara Walker
Scene of McPherson’s Death, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Pack-Mules in the Mountains, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.13, © 2005 Kara Walker
Pack-Mules in the Mountains, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Lost Mountain at Sunrise, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.11, © 2005 Kara Walker
Lost Mountain at Sunrise, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Buzzard's Roost Pass, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.4, © 2005 Kara Walker
Buzzard’s Roost Pass, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, An Army Train, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.2, © 2005 Kara Walker
An Army Train, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.9, © 2005 Kara Walker
Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta, from the portfolio…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Deadbrook after the Battle of Ezra's Church, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.8, © 2005 Kara Walker
Deadbrook after the Battle of Ezra’s Church, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Crest of Pine Mountain, Where General Polk Fell, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.7, © 2005 Kara Walker
Crest of Pine Mountain, Where General Polk Fell, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Cotton Hoards in Southern Swamp, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.6, © 2005 Kara Walker
Cotton Hoards in Southern Swamp, from the portfolio Harper…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.5, © 2005 Kara Walker
Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Occupation of Alexandria, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.12, © 2005 Kara Walker
Occupation of Alexandria, from the portfolio Harper’s…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Foote's Gun-Boats Ascending to Attack Fort Henry, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.10, © 2005 Kara Walker
Foote’s Gun-Boats Ascending to Attack Fort Henry, from the…
Date2005
offset lithograph and screenprint on paper
Not on view
Kara Walker, Banks's Army Leaving Simmsport, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, offset lithograph and screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2008.19.1.3, © 2005 Kara Walker
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