Williamstown, MA—Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will present Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress. An exhibition of selected works by the internationally acclaimed artist, Narratives of a Negress was organized jointly by WCMA and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. Known for her black paper silhouettes, Kara Walker has quickly become one of the most important voices of her generation. Her images depict Civil War-era scenes filled with visual stereotypes, sex, violence, and disquieting power relationships. In these works, Walker addresses racial identity in a confrontational way. Narratives of a Negress will be on view from August 30-December 7, 2003.

"Kara Walker is one of the most significant artists working today, and her exhibition will have an enormous impact here at Williams," says Director Linda Shearer. "We are thrilled to have organized this important exhibition with the Tang. It was clear it would be a perfect catalyst for rich interdisciplinary teaching and thinking, as well as a major contribution to the many cultural offerings in the Berkshires."

Charged Imagery in Traditional Forms

Kara Walker's elegant and provocative paper cutout silhouettes demonstrate a mastery of craft and installation. Her charged imagery, often set in scenes that evoke the antebellum American South, uses racial stereotypes, sex, and violence to confront troubling periods in American history and the fantasies and abuses that continue in the present. Produced over the past decade, the works in this exhibition include the silhouette installation Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994), based on the 1939 motion picture Gone with the Wind. Other highlights of the exhibition include Negress Notes (Brown Follies) (1996), a series of 24 small watercolors, and Hunting Scene (2001), a large cut-paper diptych.

Several of Walker's works have elaborate titles that refer to 19th-century slave autobiographies, such as the wall-sized panorama For the Benefit of All the Races of Mankind (Mos' Specially the Master One, Boss) An Exhibition of Artifacts, Remnants, and Effluvia EXCAVATED from the Black Heart of a Negress III (2002). This installation—the most recent piece in the show—uses colored-light projections that illuminate the cut-paper images as well as the gallery. These lights simultaneously project the shadows of viewers onto the wall, mixing them into the turbulent scene.

"What this picaresque blend of slave narrative, Harlequin romance, fairy-tale illustration, pornography and racial stereotyping means is hard to say," wrote Holland Cotter in The New York Times, in his review of Narratives of a Negress. "But there is certainly nothing else in American art quite like it."

Related Programs Feature Artist and Curators

Kara Walker will be the keynote speaker at the Plonsker Family Lecture on Saturday, October 25, 2003. Other participants include Hamza Walker, Director of Education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and moderator Mark Reinhardt, Professor of Political Science at Williams College. The lecture begins at 2 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, Williams College. A reception in the WCMA galleries will follow.

WCMA will also be hosting "Narratives," a series of five gallery talks about the exhibition. Presenters of these talks include the curators of the exhibition, along with other art historians. The schedule is as follows:

Gallery Talk, "Narratives" Series, by Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections, WCMA, and Ian Berry, Curator, The Tang Museum
Wednesday, September 10, 2003, 12:10-12:50 p.m.

Gallery Talk, "Narratives" Series, by Linda Shearer, WCMA Director
Wednesday, October 8, 2003, 12:10-12:50 p.m.

Gallery Talk, "Narratives" Series, by Darby English, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Chicago
Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 12:10-12:50 p.m.

Gallery Talk, "Narratives" Series, by Lisa Dorin, Assistant Curator, WCMA
Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 12:10-12:50 p.m.

Dialogues, "Narratives" Series
The conclusion of talks on Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress. With presentations by artists, students, faculty, and staff.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003, 4 p.m.

Additionally, Director Linda Shearer will introduce a screening of Gone with the Wind at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. on Friday, August 22, 2003 at 8:15 p.m. Her introduction will link the film with Walker's work.

About the Artist

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, Calif., in 1969. While earning a B.F.A. degree from the Atlanta College of Art, she began combining themes of slavery, sex, and violence with a most unlikely medium, the old-fashioned, genteel craft of paper silhouettes. As Artnews noted, that fusion transformed "this innocuous 19th-century technique into biting, in-your-face art."

Three months after Walker earned an M.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994, her work appeared in a group show at New York City's Drawing Center. After numerous solo and group exhibitions, Walker was awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius award at the age of 27. Her work appeared in the Whitney Museum's 1997 Biennial and she represented the U.S. at the 2002 Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil.

Catalogue Presents First Scholarly View

The exhibition's four co-curators are Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections at WCMA; Ian Berry, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator, The Tang Museum; Darby English, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago; and Mark Reinhardt, Associate Professor of Political Science at Williams College.

Narratives of a Negress is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, co-published by WCMA, the Tang Museum, and MIT Press. The 208-page catalogue is available at the museum shop. The exhibition catalogue is the first significant scholarly treatment of Walker and her work, and it contains reproductions of the artworks; writings by the artist; and essays from co-curators English and Reinhardt, art historian Anne Wagner, and cultural critic Michele Wallace. The catalogue considers Walker's work from multidisciplinary perspectives, including political theory, art history, literary criticism, and cultural studies.

Narratives of a Negress opened at the Tang Museum, where it was on view from January 18 to June 2, 2003. This exhibition contains material that is adult in nature.

Publicity Images Available

Publicity images for Narratives of a Negress and other current exhibitions are available for use. The images include details of Gone and Hunting Scene, along with an installation image of Gone. Images can be found at http://www.wcma.org/press.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Suzanne Augugliaro, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu