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Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural

January 17, 2020 @ 10:00 am - February 28, 2021 @ 5:00 pm

Free

In 1952, while a student at La Esmeralda—Mexico’s national school of art—American artist John Wilson (1922–2015) painted a powerful mural that he titled The Incident. The fresco depicted a scene of a racial-terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, as witnessed by a young African American family. Although the mural is no longer extant, this exhibition brings together publicly for the first time nearly all of Wilson’s known preparatory sketches and painted studies for it, as well as related prints and drawings. Inspired by the political and social activism of the Mexican muralists, in particular José Clemente Orozco, and haunted by images of lynchings that he had seen in newspapers as a child, Wilson revisited the subject of The Incident over many years as a way of grappling with racial violence, both past and present. The works on view, some disturbing in content, encourage contemporary viewers to do the same.

Details

Start:
January 17, 2020 @ 10:00 am
End:
February 28, 2021 @ 5:00 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Category:
Website:
https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/reckoning-incident-john-wilsons-studies-lynching-mural

Organizer

Yale University Art Gallery
Phone:
2034320601
Email:
artgalleryinfo@yale.edu
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Other

Curators
Exhibition made possible by the Isabel B. Wilson Memorial Fund. Organized by Pamela Franks, Class of 1956 Director, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass., and former Senior Deputy Director and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Elisabeth Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery.
Artwork Medium
None
Event Type
None

Venue

Yale University Art Gallery
1111 Chapel St
New Haven, CT 06510 United States
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Phone:
2034320601
View Venue Website