The Colonel’s Cabinet

Renée Stout, The Colonel's Cabinet, 1991-1994, mixed media: carpet, chair, painting, and cabinet with found and handmade objects, overall: 67 ¹⁄₂ x 60 x 50 ¹⁄₂ in. (171.5 x 152.4 x 128.3 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, 1994.45.1A-MMM, © 1994, Renee Stout

Artwork Details

Title: The Colonel’s Cabinet
Artist: Renée Stout
Date: 1991-1994
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: overall: 67 ¹⁄₂ x 60 x 50 ¹⁄₂ in. (171.5 x 152.4 x 128.3 cm.)
Copyright: © 1994, Renee Stout
Credit Line: Museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson
Mediums: musical instrument
furniture
toy
mixed media
Mediums Description: mixed media: carpet, chair, painting, and cabinet with found and handmade objects
Classifications: Sculpture
Assemblage
Highlights: African American Art
Subjects: Object — weapon — dagger
Object — art object — photograph
Object — written matter — map
Object — musical instrument — guitar
Object — other — container
Object — furniture — cabinet
Object — written matter — book
Object — furniture — chair
Object — art object — sculpture
Object Number: 1994.45.1A-MMM
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1994.45.1A-MMM

Artwork Description

The Colonel’s Cabinet is a narrative of exploration and memory that traces the life of one Colonel Frank. Like the gentleman travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who created “cabinets of curiosities” filled with artifacts of distant people and places, the fictitious Colonel Frank collected small treasures to remind himself of where he had been and individuals he had met. An invented persona based on Stout’s father, who, she said, brought the world to her shy and introspective mother, the colonel also reflects Stout’s own search for a personal history.

African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Right Era, and Beyond, 2012