{"id":315543,"date":"2026-02-24T23:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T23:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315543\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T23:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T23:39:12","slug":"moca-acquires-kara-walkers-reimagining-of-a-stonewall-jackson-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315543\/","title":{"rendered":"MOCA acquires Kara Walker’s reimagining of a Stonewall Jackson statue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Museum of Contemporary Art has acquired Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d a cornerstone of the museum\u2019s groundbreaking \u201cMonuments\u201d exhibition<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It joins the 158 works by 106 artists that were added to MOCA\u2019s permanent collection last year, including major works by Jacqueline Humphries, Mike Kelley, Shizu Saldamando, Mary Weatherford, Julie Mehretu and Nairy Baghramian. Fifty artists are new to the collection, including Jonathas de Andrade, Leilah Babirye, Meriem Bennani, Paul Chan, Cynthia Daignault and Ali Eyal.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnmanned Drone\u201d \u2014 a towering testament to the power of transmogrification \u2014 commands a room of its own at the Brick gallery on Western Avenue, which co-presented the \u201cMonuments\u201d exhibition in October. Walker created the 13-foot-tall bronze sculpture out of a statue of the prominent Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson that was originally in Charlottesville, Va. The statue had been removed after serving as a significant gathering place for the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally of white supremacists.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A detail of a severed arm \u2014 part of Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d which she created using a decommissioned statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.<\/p>\n

(Etienne Laurent \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

In a review of \u201cMonuments,\u201d which declared the exhibition \u201cthe most significant American art museum show right now,\u201d<\/a> former Times art critic Christopher Knight called \u201cUnmanned Drone\u201d \u201cdevastating\u201d and \u201cbrilliant.\u201d <\/p>\n

In an interview last fall,<\/a> Brick director Hamza Walker explained to The Times that the city of Charlottesville issued a request for proposals from organizations interested in taking possession of the statue. The Brick applied and was deeded the statue, taking physical possession on Jan. 6, 2022. The gallery then gave the statue to Walker. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey were getting rid of the Lee and the Stonewall Jackson statues, and they said, \u2018We don\u2019t want them put back up for further veneration,\u2019\u201d Hamza Walker said. \u201cAnd so the idea of giving the statue to an artist fit that bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other applicants skipped over the line about not putting them up for further veneration, Hamza Walker said, noting that the Brick\u2019s proposal was up against ones from Civil War battlefields and Laurel Hill, the birthplace of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A detail of the horse\u2019s nostril in Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d which MOCA has acquired.<\/p>\n

(Etienne Laurent \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Kara Walker sliced apart the statue with a plasma cutter and welded it back together in an entirely new form. She did away with Jackson\u2019s face and put much of the focus on his famous steed, Little Sorrel. The horse now stands upright with its head pushing out from the back of its saddle. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t want you to be able to identify with him. She wanted the emphasis on Little Sorrel rather than the myth of the man,\u201d Hamza Walker explained of Kara Walker\u2019s intentions. \u201cShe wanted to reduce it to horse and rider.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fiend has no head,\u201d Knight commented in his review. \u201cThe folkloric Euro-American story of the \u2018headless horseman\u2019 comes to mind \u2014 a nightmarish, animated corpse who haunts the living. As a metaphor for obtuse white supremacy, still active today, that terror figure is hard to beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s work was the only transformed statue out of the nearly dozen decommissioned statues related to the Confederacy featured in the \u201cMonuments\u201d exhibition. The others were all presented as they looked when they were removed, many during the protests that swelled in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A detail of a sword on Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture \u201cUnmanned Drone.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Etienne Laurent \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

In addition to \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d MOCA announced several other acquisitions that were either featured in recent exhibitions or have significant connections to the museum. These include an environmental sculpture by Olafur Eliasson; work by Takako Yamaguchi; a media installation by Paul Pfeiffer titled \u201cRed Green Blue\u201d (2022), co-acquired with the Brooklyn Museum; and pieces by Cynthia Daignault, Shizu Saldamando and Henry Taylor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe expansion of MOCA\u2019s collection this year reflects a sustained and deeply collaborative effort to think critically about what it means to build a museum collection in the twenty-first century,\u201d Clara Kim, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Monuments<\/p>\n

Where: The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., Los Angeles, and the Brick, 518 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles
When: Through May 3
Tickets:<\/a> $18 for adults; $10 for students with I.D. and seniors; and free for children under 12 for \u201cMonuments\u201d at the Geffen Contemporary. Free at the Brick. Free at the Geffen Contemporary on the first Friday of the month; reservations recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Museum of Contemporary Art has acquired Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d a cornerstone of the museum\u2019s groundbreaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1484,307,304,305,306,147325,29623,147327,308,93,21942,61,60,147321,147322,147323,14362,147329,147328,314,147326,147324,1962],"class_list":{"0":"post-315543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-brick-director-hamza-walker","14":"tag-collection","15":"tag-cynthia-daignault","16":"tag-design","17":"tag-entertainment","18":"tag-exhibition","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-kara-walker","22":"tag-moca","23":"tag-monuments","24":"tag-museum","25":"tag-possession","26":"tag-shizu-saldamando","27":"tag-statue","28":"tag-stonewall-jackson","29":"tag-unmanned-drone","30":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}