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Home>Exhibitions>Special Installations>Conversations: Carrie Mae Weems and The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial

Conversations: Carrie Mae Weems and The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial

Now on View

Ongoing from March 17, 2021
West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 66

Be among the first to see our new acquisition, on display in conversation with a moving work of American sculpture.       

Come and experience how Carrie Mae Weems responds to The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial, created a century earlier to honor one of the first Civil War regiments of African Americans formed in the North.

In her untitled series of photographs, Weems uses images of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s memorial to commemorate the Great Migration of African Americans streaming north from the Jim Crow South after the Civil War. Layering text and pictures, Weems centers African American experiences that speak of racial pride and resilience, sacrifice and determination.

Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled, 1996, printed 2020, 7 inkjet prints with sandblasted text on glass in wood frames, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2020.96.1.1-7

Artwork

The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial

Commissioned from the celebrated American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the early 1880s, the memorial commemorates the valiant efforts of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts.

Highlight

Say Their Names

Researchers at the National Gallery of Art identified the names of the more than 1,500 soldiers and officers who served with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment between March 1863 and April 1865. See the full roster of names and additional information about individual soldiers.

Organization
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Passes
Admission is always free. Timed-entry passes are required to enter the buildings.

Banner detail: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial, 1900, patinated plaster, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, Cornish, New Hampshire, X.15233; Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (1 photograph of 7-part series), 1996, printed 2020, 7 inkjet prints with sandblasted text on glass in wood frames, Patrons’ Permanent Fund, 2020.96.1.1–7