Robert Lehman Distinguished Lecture | Truth Be Told: Kara Walker and Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War

Join scholar-curator Stephanie Sparling Williams for a close look at NBMAA’s newly acquired print series by contemporary artist Kara Walker, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). In each print, Walker appropriates illustrations from a two-volume anthology published in 1866 by Harper’s Weekly chronicling the Civil War, superimposing them with stenciled silhouetted figures. In her own fictive account, which centers the black body in a mélange of unsettling configurations, Walker challenges cultural authority over truth claims, as well as notions of power in the telling of history.

Dr. Stephanie Sparling WIlliams is a black feminist theorist and an Associate Curator at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Williams holds a Doctorate in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California (USC) and a Certificate in Visual Studies, also from USC. Her scholarly work is invested in modern and contemporary art histories, with a particular focus on the direct address, performance, conceptual, and feminist art making practices of women identified as artists of color.