Organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art and The Museum Box, Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) features 15 works on paper by Kara Walker.

In 2005, Walker worked in collaboration with the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies in New York to produce Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), a portfolio of 15 prints that considers experiences of racism toward African Americans that were absent or only alluded to in historical representations of the Civil War.

Each print in the portfolio is an enlargement of a woodcut plate from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Chicago, 1862), overlaid with Walker’s silkscreen cutout figures rendered in solid black silhouette. She surfaces race and gender-based biases, highlights profound sociopolitical inequalities, and brings to the fore a silenced history of violence that complicate the initial narrative.

This exhibition constitutes an important opportunity to revisit the history of the antebellum South and the ensuing Civil War through the contemporary lenses of race, slavery, gender, and politics.

All works courtesy of the New Britain Museum of American Art. This exhibition is generously supported by Emily Leff in memory of James L Davis, III. Additional support by Benjamin and Karina Kelley.

On view through May 27, 2024.

About the Artist: Kara Walker
Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) is one of the most prominent American artists working today, emerging in the mid-1990s with provocative works that critically revisited a history that until then had mostly been told from male and white points of view. She is best known for her black cut-paper silhouettes, which depict historical narratives of the antebellum South marked by subjugation, sexuality, and violence.