National Portrait Gallery
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass
December 8, 2023 – August 9, 2026
Sir Isaac Julien’s moving image installation Lessons of the Hour (2019) interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of nineteenth-century activist, writer, orator, and philosopher Frederick Douglass. Through critical research, fictional reconstruction, and a marriage of poetic image and sound, Julien asserts Douglass’ enduring lessons of justice, abolition, and freedom that remain just as relevant today.
The presentation is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.
Installation view, Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, September 24–December 15, 2019. © Isaac Julien, Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro. Image Courtesy of SCAD.
