JACKSON, MISS.- The Mississippi Museum of Art presents Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now, an exhibition from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG), April 27 through August 25, 2019. It is the first major museum exhibition to explore the art form of cut-paper profiles in terms of their rich historical roots and powerful contemporary presence. Black Out will be complemented by a Museum-curated exhibition, A Closer Look: Silhouette Artists in Antebellum Mississippi.

Well before the advent of photography in the mid-19th century, silhouettes were a popular way to capture a likeness quickly and in multiples to hang in parlors and paste into scrapbooks. While commissioning painted portraits was available to people of wealth, paper silhouettes were inexpensive and democratized the genre, offering virtually instantaneous depictions of everyone from presidents to citizens and visitors from afar to those who were enslaved. While museums have paid little attention to the art form, Black Out aims to broaden the traditional American art canon by placing silhouettes—and their subjects—at the forefront.

The exhibition, which primarily features works on paper, also brings together a collector’s album, ceramics, sculptures, prints, media art, and mixed-media installations. Comprising art from 1796 to today, the exhibition presents more than 45 objects and is curated by Asma Naeem, NPG’s former curator of prints, drawings, and media arts. The “Then” portion of the exhibition features sitters who have been previously “blacked out” in historical narratives and includes some of the earliest examples of American portraiture. The “Now” section explores how silhouettes today are no less ubiquitous and can be seen on everything from book illustrations and commercial advertising to profiles people create on smartphones. Artwork by leading contemporary women artists in this section take the silhouette form in new, innovative directions.

“With both historical and contemporary explorations into the form of silhouette, Black Out reveals new pathways between past and present, particularly with regard to how we can reassess notions of race, power, individualism, and, even, the digital self,” Naeem said. “Black Out unpacks the art of silhouettes as a potent art form, revealing the paradoxes of a country roiling with ideals of freedom and the trauma of slavery in the 1800s and the messiness of our modern lives.”

“THEN”
The historical section of the exhibition presents works by Auguste Edouart (1789‒1861) and William Bache (1771‒1845), two of the most well-known silhouette artists of their time. In addition to works by these established artists, Black Out features a rare, life-size profile of a 19-year-old enslaved woman named Flora, whose silhouette was discovered with an original bill of sale from 1796, noting she was sold for 25 pounds sterling. This work is one of the few known portraits of an enslaved person from the 18th century in institutional holdings in the U.S. The Portrait Gallery conserved this extraordinary portrait for this presentation. Black Out also showcases the boundary-breaking history of silhouettes, including the earliest-known likeness of a same-sex couple, a double silhouette of Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant from c. 1805–15; a silhouette of Laura Dewey Bridgman, an accomplished teacher who, at a young age, lost her sight and hearing; and an album by Bache from the first decade of the 19th century. Visitors will have the opportunity to scroll through digital pages of the Bache album to see subjects such as George and Martha Washington along with many everyday New Orleans citizens.

“Silhouettes were an inexpensive and popular form of portraiture before photography, and it is fascinating to recognize how many people—from all walks of life—have had their silhouette made. At the same time, to “black out” can be to erase or, in the case of portraiture, to take someone out of the light. By presenting this once-common art form, the exhibition addresses the complicated histories of American race relations, gender politics, and social class," said Kim Sajet, director, Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

“The Mississippi Museum of Art has a long history of hosting exhibitions like Black Out that offer a fresh, content-rich lens through which to examine relevant and often difficult issues that affect our community. We’re also delighted that the exhibition offers us the opportunity to share more captivating work by Kara Walker, an artist Mississippians should recognize from her participation in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge project that is currently underway here in Jackson,” said Museum Director Betsy Bradley.

“NOW”
Examining the relevance of silhouettes today, the “Now” section of the exhibition includes large installations by contemporary women artists who explore issues of slavery, gender, modern alienation, and people’s relationship with technology. Kara Walker’s (b. 1969) panoramic wall murals of often graphic and nightmarish scenes of plantation life are displayed along with her equally disturbing “play set” in laser-cut steel painted black. MacArthur Fellow and Stanford University professor Camille Utterback (b. 1970) uses coding and computer software to create an interactive digital work that reacts to visitors’ shadows and movements, aiming to reemphasize our physicality in this virtual age. New York-based artist Kumi Yamashita (b. 1968), a finalist of the Portrait Gallery’s 2013 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, “sculpts” light and shadow with objects to create mixed-media profiles of people who are not there. In Origami (2018), Yamashita creases the edges of origami squares so precisely as to create each sitter’s distinct profile in shadow. Each profile square is custom-constructed during installation using people chosen by the artist at each museum location.