Art News: Kehinde Wiley Sculpture

New Kehinde Wiley Sculpture Challenging Southern Monuments to be Installed in Richmond, Virginia

By Joanna Patzig 

Photo Courtesy of Flickr by Kent Yang

This week has been full of excellent cultural news in Richmond, Virginia. On Saturday, a main road was renamed “Arthur Ashe Boulevard” in honor of the beloved tennis player and activist from Richmond. Thousands came out on Saturday to celebrate Arthur Ashe and the power of recognizing African American History. Next, Richmond will welcome Kehinde Wiley’s first public sculpture that is in direct response to the confederate monuments found throughout Richmond. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has commissioned Wiley’s first large sculpture to be installed at the museum on Arthur Ashe Boulevard at the end of the year. News about Wiley’s sculpture is incredibly moving as a challenge to the legacy of confederate hate, especially if you’re familiar with the landscape of public art in Richmond. ​
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Richmond, Virginia is part of a growing movement of southern cities trying to address it’s problematic monuments. The south is full of public art dedicated to the confederate south; Virginia has the most confederate statues of any U.S. state, more than two hundred. Richmond’s Monument Avenue is known for astoundingly large statues of confederate generals that for many represent a glorification of white supremacy, and an insult to our diverse community. What to do with these monuments remains a controversy. 

Now a large work will be installed just blocks away from Monument Avenue very much in conversation with those contested monuments. Kehinde Wiley is known for his presidential portrait of Obama, and his distinctive photorealistic portraits of people of color that reference everything from hip hop to renaissance paintings. Wiley’s bronze sculpture “Rumors of War” will show a young African American subject riding a horse in direct response to the sculptures on Monument Avenue. "'Rumors of War' attempts to use the language of equestrian portraiture to both embrace and subsume the fetishization of state violence," said Wiley of the work. The sculpture will be installed at Times Square in New York City September 2019, and then brought to its permanent home on the grounds of the VMFA in December. It seems like Richmond's physical and cultural landscape is finally changing for the better.