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First View of Kara Walker "Unmanned Drone"

Kara Walker, Unmanned Drone, 2025. Photo: Ruben Diaz 2025/Courtesy of The Brick

The Brick has released images of Kara Walker's Unmanned Drone, made from the Charlottesville, Virginia, statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson that was a backdrop to a 2017 white supremacist rally. The 4.5-ton bronze sculpture will be a centerpiece of "MONUMENTS," opening at the The Brick and MOCA's Geffen Contemporary on Oct. 23. 

Kara Walker, Unmanned Drone, 2025. Photo: Ruben Diaz 2025/Courtesy of The Brick


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Ted Gallagher NYC said…
I am most uncomfortable with Walker's result.
Anyone familiar with Lost Cause mythology will instantly read this as a mere disambiguation of a Confederate idol. I naively imagined bronzes melted down to affirm something, anything, good. Not this, what, adulation to war?
October 18, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Anonymous said…
> opening at the The
> Brick and MOCA's
> Geffen Contemporary

For those locations, this type of exhibit is fine. But all the contemporary art at LACMA, Huntington and Hammer (and other than artworks assembled by the founder himself, really a contemporary museum), and, of course, the Broad or Marciano's semi-museum on Wilshire becomes a bit too much. Too much same 'ol, same 'ol. Much less commercial galleries in LA like a Hauser and Wirth.

Meanwhile, I notice the Getty will soon have a special exhibit titled "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl."

As for a museum like the Metropolitan, it also has shows affected by the politics (or mindset) of "hip, trendy, relevant." But because the Met's overall history (and budget, and collection) is so well-established, the filler of contemporary doesn't stand out as much as it does in LA.

I'm sure there will be "hip, trendy" in the Lucas Museum too,. But it hopefully won't be so much that it becomes another part of the big blur of LA's museums.
October 18, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Good. "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable" is a famous quote by Cesar A. Cruz that captures the idea that art can be both comforting and provocative. Another quote, from Michael Moore, directly states, "The purpose of art actually is, in many cases, to make you feel quite uncomfortable".
October 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Ted Gallagher NYC said…
Noted. But I also want value-added when an original work is adulterated. I see none of that here.
A missed opportunity.
October 19, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Anonymous said…
These comments are a good example of the foolishness of opining on art and exhibitions you haven’t seen.
October 20, 2025 at 6:40 AM
Ted Gallagher NYC said…
FYI, there's a review of the show in today's paper.
I dropped the paywall:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/arts/design/art-civil-war-monuments-brick-geffen-contemporary-los-angeles.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vE8.v_QN.ZSRfKG8hlh5u&smid=url-share
October 20, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Anonymous said…
People usually go to museums to see art they enjoy, which contributes beauty and displays skill & talent to the world. Kara Walker's "reimagining" of a Confederate officer is grotesque. She took a magnificent work of art and turned it into something hideous. As a horse lover, it's disturbing that she mangled an equestrian statue at all. The Civil War is widely misunderstood since victors write the history books, but Lincoln never freed a single slave in any Union slave-owning state or territory Union troops controlled. Most students aren't taught that fact or that Lincoln's home state, Illinois, had the most draconian "anti-black" laws in the nation. Freed slaves couldn't step foot in Illinois without risking fines/arrest & possibly being auctioned into slavery. Abe wanted to deport freed slaves, to Liberia or Haiti, any country that would take them. He wanted an ethnic purge! Better the statue be turned over to an organization with a more balanced, objective view on the Civil War. Walker's "art" is an abomination. Slavery, btw, flourished under the Stars 'n Stripes many decades before it briefly existed under the Confederacy. Should Whitney Houston be shamed for singing the Star Spangled banner at the Super Bowl?- should artists melt down her wax figures and albums?
December 6, 2025 at 1:59 PM
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