The Frick Pittsburgh’s 2025 exhibition season will start next March with Kara Walker, one of the most celebrated and prolific figures in contemporary art.
Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) features Walker’s series of prints with her reinterpretations of 15 Winslow Homer illustrations from a pro-Union Civil War history book. Walker has covered Homer’s illustrations with the collaged black paper cutouts her work is known for. The visual layers she creates confront viewers with what’s absent in the archival materials.
We bring you an exclusive conversation with the Frick’s curatorial team on what museum-goers can expect from this exhibition.
A Sneak Peek of Kara Walker’s Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) at the Frick Pittsburgh
What do you hope viewers take away from this show?
Elizabeth Barker, Executive Director: We’re incredibly excited to share the work of Kara Walker, one of America’s greatest living artists, with our community here in Pittsburgh. The show gives form to the layered narratives and shifts in perspective that shape how we understand history. Of course, these are stunning artworks at first glance. But we hope visitors will give them more than a glance. Looking closely offers so much more, including a fuller sense of African American experiences during and long after the U.S. Civil War.
What kind of exhibition experience can people expect?
Dawn Brean, Chief Curator & Director of Collections: Visitors should preparee for a powerful experience. Kara Walker’s work is thought-provoking. It engages with themes of race, gender, and history. Her art invites viewers to confront uncomfortable truths and the complex relationship between the past and present.
The visual disruption of her black silhouettes on the surface of Winslow Homer’s illustrations brings to the surface a silenced history of violence. It shows what’s absent from the initial narrative.
We plan to include a reflection space for visitors to engage with the exhibition content. We hope that they do this in a manner that feels contemplative, respectful, and restorative.
How does the show work in conversation with the other works and programming at the Frick (Clayton, the collection…)?
Dawn Brean: “Though young at the time, Henry Clay Frick was alive during the Civil War. During the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, Frick was building his coke business. The country was on the precipice of changes that would lead into the Gilded Age. The issues central to this time—citizenship, industry, voting rights, power and wealth inequalities—continue to shape our society today. Kara Walker’s work engages with these themes, drawing powerful connections between the past and present.
Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is a powerful recontextualization of the Civil War imagery from special 1866 and 1868 editions of Harper’s. It comes to the Frick as we continue to present Gilded, Not Golden, our recently reinterpreted tour of Clayton, the Frick family home. We’re having important conversations about history and the preservation of memory—whose stories we telling? Whose stories are absent from the historical record?
This is a traveling exhibition. What does the Frick’s curatorial vision bring to it that it didn’t have in other places the work was shown?
Dawn Brean: We’ll present the traveling exhibition alongside bound copies of Harper’s Weekly Civil War issues that are part of the Frick family’s library at Clayton. This is a unique opportunity to consider the nascent preservation of Civil War history. The show asks what the narratives were in the immediate aftermath of the war and how those narratives shaped public perceptions of race during the Gilded Age and beyond.
We are also thinking about how to bring different voices into our galleries. Kara Walker is such an influential artist, and I think visitors would appreciate hearing how her art has influenced others.
What kind of extra educational and community engagement programming will the museum be doing to accompany the show?
Amanda Gillen, Director of Learning & Visitor Experience: I’m excited to announce a full slate of education programs in early 2025. We will be partnering with local organizations, historians, art historians, artists and writers on programs that explore different facets of the exhibition. These works are rich with opportunities for conversation. We hope to explore whose stories are told in our collective historical narratives, the important tradition of the silhouette. Walker’s work helps clarify the role that contemporary artists play in facilitating these conversations.
Tickets for Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) will go on sale in mid-November 2024.
Story by Emma Riva / Photo courtesy of the Frick Pittsburgh
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