Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War

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Rumors of War

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Question 1

What does the title, Rumors of War, come from?

A	A biblical passage that advises the righteous to take up arms against their approaching enemies
B	A biblical passage that promises hope for the marginalized in the face of oppression
C	A biblical passage that promotes bravery among the blessed at the prospect of oncoming war
D	A biblical passage that foretells of great battles ahead and the need for strong, powerful leaders to protect the faithful

Question 2

What does Wiley’s larger body of work called Rumors of War seek to address?

A	The erroneous representation of the victorious leaders in major European battles as white men
B	The changes in high fashion for men of power and means over the last three centuries
C	The way that propaganda imagery in the Euro-American tradition has perpetuated rumors, or mythologies, about war, specifically its victors
D	The lack of positive, empowered representation of Black people in the history of Euro-American art

Question 3

Which of these is not among the reasons Wiley represented a man on horseback?

A	There is a long history of the equestrian figure which conveys victory and power, dating back to at least the ancient Romans.
B	Prior to the 2021 removal of the Confederate monuments, the policy was for all commemorative sculptures in Richmond to be equestrian figures.
C	Wiley was creating a direct response to the equestrian figures of Confederate generals on Monument Avenue in Richmond.
D	The man astride a horse, on top of a stone pedestal, creates a sense of monumentality and awe for the viewer.

Question 4

What is the counter-narrative that Wiley’s sculpture presented to the Confederate monuments in Richmond, Virginia?

A	That symbols of white supremacy do not reflect the prevailing values of hope and equality in the 21st century
B	That leaders from both sides of the Civil War should be represented and honored on Monument Avenue
C	That bronze equestrian sculptures are not a thing of the past, but can still effectively speak to modern interests and values
D	That commemorative monuments are best presented and contextualized in museums rather than in public parks and other municipal spaces

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Key points

Kehinde Wiley created this equestrian sculpture in direct response to the Confederate memorials situated along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. He specifically repeated the pose and composition of the J.E.B. Stuart memorial, also an equestrian sculpture, replacing the uniformed Confederate general with the figure of a young Black man in contemporary clothing.
This is not Wiley’s first artwork featuring a Black male rider on horseback. Beginning in 2005, Wiley produced a series of paintings of this subject, also called Rumors of War. Like the bronze sculpture in Richmond, the large-scale canvases in the series recreate historic equestrian portraits of powerful leaders, supplanting the main figures with young African American men as a means of reclaiming Black representation and offering a vision of hope and empowerment. The title, Rumors of War, refers to a biblical passage from the New Testament book of Matthew, which speaks to the promise of rebirth for the downtrodden in the face of oppression.
Reflecting on his own emotional reaction to Richmond’s Confederate monuments, as a Black man, Wiley intended for his sculpture to serve as a counter-narrative to the white supremacist ideals perpetuated by the city’s monuments, which had been in place since the decades following the U.S. Civil War (all, however, were removed in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, less than a year after Rumors of War was installed in Richmond).

Go deeper

Learn more about this sculpture at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Learn more about this sculpture and its brief, initial display in Times Square before being installed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Kehinde Wiley’s studio.

Learn more about the Confederate memorials on Monument Avenue and specifically about the first memorial to be erected in 1890, to General Robert E. Lee.

Read more about the legacy of Confederate art and how it continues to affect understanding of the U.S. Civil War today.

More to think about

Nine smaller scale versions of Wiley’s sculpture were made after he completed the original for Richmond in 2019. (Read about one of the smaller versions that is on long-term loan to a non-for-profit serving predominantly Black individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Saint Louis, Missouri). Although Wiley made the original sculpture in direct response to the Confederate monuments in Richmond, Virginia, the placement of the copies of the sculpture in other locations can also have a powerful impact on local audiences who may not immediately associate it with a response to the white supremacist legacy of United States Confederacy. Where else can you envision versions of Rumors of War? Why did you select that location and how might the meaning and resonance of the sculpture expand for audiences in that place?