Kara Walker: Annotating History

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1, 5 – 7 p.m.

POMONA COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART EXHIBITS IT’S RECENT ACQUISITION IN “KARA WALKER: ANNOTATING HISTORY” OPENING NOV. 1, 2008

“Kara Walker: Annotating History” will be on view from November 1 through December 21, 2008, at the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont. An opening reception will be held at the Museum on Saturday, November 1, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, Associate Professor of American Art and the Director of Visual Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will present a public lecture entitled “A Flood of Rememory: Hurricane Katrina and Visual Trauma,” in conjunction with the exhibition on Thursday, November 20, at 4:15 p.m.

“Kara Walker: Annotating History” focuses on Walker’s rereading and restatement of the American Civil War. The core of the exhibition is the Pomona College Museum of Art’s recent acquisition of the portfolio, Harper’s Illustrated History of the Civil War, (Annotated). For the 15 large format prints, Walker appropriated selected illustrations from the two-volume publication Harper’s Illustrated History of the Civil War of 1866/1868, over which she superimposed silhouette figures to interrupt and transform the dominant nineteenth-century narrative of battle, death, and national sacrifice. She imposes other representations of slavery and racism to challenge both the selective erasures and portrayals of African Americans during the antebellum period and their involvement in the American Civil War.

The exhibition includes the original Harper’s Illustrated History of the Civil War, courtesy of the Claremont Colleges Honnold/Mudd Library; Walker’s cut paper installation Danse de la Nubienne Nouveaux and her series of gauche and ink drawings Negress Notes, courtesy of the Broad Foundation.

In 2007 Time magazine named Kara Walker one of the top 100 most influential figures in the arts. Writing for the magazine, artist Barbara Kruger stated: “Few have managed to capture the collision between past and present, between histories and horror stories, between sexuality and shame, between skin and meat, as powerfully and provocatively as Kara Walker.” Best known for her iconic room-size, silhouette installation pieces, Walker has gained notable recognition with a major retrospective and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1997 Walker became the youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, and was selected as the United States representative to the 2002 São Paolo Biennale in Brazil.

Kara Walker: Annotating History