On view at The Smithsonian – Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass

⁣Now on view (8 December 2023–6 December 2026), this is the first joint acquisition between the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC.⁣

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 organised by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. 

Lessons of the Hour was jointly acquired by SAAM and the National Portrait Gallery in 2023. The 28-minute work debuted for Washington audiences December 8, 2023, and remains on public view through the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 2026.

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Image: Isaac Julien, Lessons of The Hour (Lessons of the Hour), 2019

Film credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Acquired in part through the generosity of the Smithsonian Secretary and the Smithsonian National Board, Agnes Gund, and through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.⁣