Opening Reception: Thursday, September 21 from 6-8pm
The Georgetown University Art Galleries Presents two exhibitions of new work by Kara Walker. The de la Cruz Art Gallery will exhibit Kara Walker: Back of Hand, and the Spagnuolo Art Gallery will present Kara Walker: Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies. Both will be the first exhibition of these works in Washington by this internationally renowned artist.
Kara Walker: Back of Hand
Maria and Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery
The exhibition presents a series of new works on paper by Kara Walker that examine themes such as complicity, racism, misremembered histories, and the violence that undergirds the legacy of the South. The exhibition was organized for display at the Athenaeum, the University of Georgia’s contemporary art space, by Dr. Katie Geha. We encourage visitors to the exhibition at Georgetown to consider the history of enslavement at this institution, making connections between Walker’s images and the landscape of the University’s own violent past.
Currently based in New York, Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide. The body of work in this exhibition represents her continued practice in drawing, working in watercolor, gouache, ink and graphite to create a series that calls forth the past at once mythological and real, ancient and contemporary. According to Walker, “I am always reflecting on the state of current events and the overlap of the historical and the mythic.”
Walker draws from a variety of influences in this recent work, recalling the political sketches of Goya, the caricatures of Daumier, and the “exotic” spectacle presented in the paintings of Gauguin. Two suites of work on display from her on-going series Book of Hours, started during the pandemic, capture the uncanny out-of-time sensation many of us endured during the early months of lock-down. Some of the otherworldly effects of these drawings have roots in medieval illuminated manuscripts, and especially the private devotional books of hours for which the series is named.
The practice of drawing for Walker is a hopeful, grounding activity. “Sitting down to make an intimate drawing is a conversation, a way of listening to what’s grumbling inside my body,” Walker explains, “and an attempt to transmit, nonverbally, an experience of being.” Two very large scale, almost mural-like drawings completed in 2021, The Ballad of How We Got Here and Feast of Famine, both completed in 2021 and shown for the first time in Washington, represent a new direction for Walker. Through a tangle of scrawled texts that fill the large paper, cut paper figures affixed to the ground seemingly dance and whirl across the sheet. Through the chaos of words, Walker indicates to the viewer that history and its attendant interpretations are anything but neat. Instead, Walker presents history without moral or, as she explains, “To demand exactitude in the pursuit of a historical truth is to go where no mind can venture and return whole.”
Kara Walker: Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies
Lucille M. and Richard F.X. Spagnuolo Art Gallery
Kara Walker: Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies subverts and reframes the visual presentation of modern American myth-making. This work from 2021 is a 12-minute stop-motion animation in which Walker’s cut-paper silhouettes reenact several of the most gruesome and infamous acts of white supremacist violence in the country’s recent history, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. Inspired by the saturation of white supremacist rhetoric within the mainstream political discourse of the past five years, Walker’s creation of the film was prescient in relation to the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the US Capitol. Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies is an unflinching interrogation of how radical figures and ideologies ingratiate themselves within the national consciousness.
These exhibitions will be on view from September 21st, 2023 – December 3rd, 2023. They were organized by Dr. Katie Geha for the Athenaeum, the University of Georgia. Works on view contain violent imagery that may not be suitable for all viewers.
Registration for this event is not required, and all exhibitions and programs at the Georgetown University Art Galleries are free and open to the public. View more information on our website.
Upcoming Public Programs:
- September 21, 2023 – Opening Reception for Kara Walker exhibitions from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. Light refreshments will be provided.
- September 22, 2023 – Cookies With the Curator. Join us for a curator-led tour of the Kara Walker exhibitions with Dr. Katie Geha. Cookies from Milk Bar will be provided. 2:00 – 3:00 pm.
- September 29, 2023 – Georgetown Art All Night. Experience special evening hours in the Galleries and visit other Georgetown studios and galleries open after dark. Presented in conjunction with Georgetown Main Street. 6:00 – 9:00 pm.
- October 10, 2023 – Identity, Trauma, and Reconciliation: A Conversation with Descendants. Presented by Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, in partnership with Georgetown’s Art and Museum Studies Masters Program. Join documentary filmmaker and founder of History Before Us, Frederick Murphy, for a conversation with descendants of enslaved individuals associated with Tudor Place Historic House & Garden and nearby sites. 6:30 pm.
- December 1, 2023 – Day With(out) Art 2023. The Georgetown University Art Galleries are proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2023 by presenting online Everyone I Know Is Sick, a program of five videos generating connections between HIV and other forms of illness and disability. Streaming through our website on December 1st. Future programs will be announced on the Galleries’ website.
