Kara Walker: Annotating History
November 1 - December 21, 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1, 5 – 7 p.m.

Lecture: Thursday, November 20, 4:15 p.m. in Lyman Hall

	© Kara Walker , Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats Harper¹s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005, lithograph and screen-print on paper. Museum purchase with funds provided by the Estate of Walter and Elise Mosher.

Professor Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, author of Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, professor of American Art and Director of Visual Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will present a public lecture entitled “A Flood of Rememory: Hurricane Katrina and Visual Trauma.”
 

In 2007 Time named Kara Walker one of the 100 most influential figures in the art. Writing for the magazine, artist Barbara Kruger stated: "Few have managed to capture the collision between past and present, between histories and horror stories, between sexuality and shame, between skin and meat, as powerfully and provocatively as Kara Walker."

The core of the exhibition is a recent acquisition, the portfolio Harper's Illustrated History of the Civil War, (Annotated). Walker appropriated selected illustrations from the two-volume publication of 1866 and 1868, enlarged them, and superimposed silhouette figures which interrupt and transform the dominant nineteenth-century narrative of battle, death, and national sacrifice. She imposes the grim reality of slavery and racism to challenge both the selective erasures and portrayals of African Americans.

The exhibition includes the original Harper's Illustrated History of the Civil War, courtesy of Honnold Library; the cut paper installation Danse de la Nubienne Nouveaux and the series Negress Notes, courtesy of the Broad Foundation.
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Project Series 37: Ben Dean
November 1 - December 21, 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1, 5 – 7 p.m.

Artist Lecture: Monday, November 10, 2:45 pm

For “Project Series 37,” Dean is premiering a new multimedia installation, Account, and six related C-prints. The exhibition reflects Dean’s long-term investigations into the history and theory of modernism, early film history, Structural film, video art, and the growing prevalence of computer generated imagery––specifically in cases where it is used as a surrogate for, or “improvement” upon, photography.

Account began as a proposal, a tool, or a structure through which Dean could interrogate how film and media change over time and how economic and social forces have evolved since the mid-19^th century. Dean explores how knowledge of the histories of spaces and places informs––or fails to inform––a direct phenomenological understanding of those same spaces and places. Combining his background and interests in history, economy, and sculpture, with his practical experience in digital technology, Dean began exploring the possibility of linking them all together. This very complex project—Account—is the end result of over five years of research, planning, filming, building, and editing.

After scouting numerous locations in the San Francisco area and conducting research into the most promising, he chose three specific sites—Islais Creek, the San Francisco City Hall, and the Pacific Shores Center—upon which to base his project. Dean filmed the three sites, and then digitally re-created each film using strict rules and parameters to conceptually unify the project. When displayed, the film and the animation are projected side-by-side, perfectly synchronized. The dual projection format this project took stemmed from a fundamental question Dean asked himself: “What would be revealed if two uncannily similar moving images, each executed in a different media, were placed side-by-side?” With Account, Dean looks at how modes of representation are deeply embedded in our consciousness—not just through accidental incident, fragmentary memory, or momentary glimpse.

The Project Series
Now in its tenth year, the Project Series is the Museum's program of focused exhibitions of work by Southern California artists. Its purpose is to bring to the Pomona College community art that is experimental and that introduces new forms, techniques, and concepts. Organized by Rebecca McGrew, this series is supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance and Sarah Miller Meigs. A catalogue accompanies each exhibition.