1863

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, in graphite, lower right: [illegible script] 2006; inscribed, in graphite, lower left: Presentation Proof [in script]; printed, in ink, lower center: ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS IN THE YEAR 1863 BY I.C EASTMAN IN THE CLERKS OFFICE OF THE DIST. COURT OF MASS.; printed, in ink, lower left: 1. Col Follanshee's & Field & Staff Officers Quarters / 2. Mass 7th [th is superscript] Battery Capt. Davis 3. Fort Halleck; printed, in ink, lower left: 4. Line Officers Quarters / 10. Petersburg RR.; printed, in ink, lower center: 5. Commissary; printed, in ink, lower right: 8. Fort McClellan [first c is superscript]; printed, in ink, lower right: 7. Fort Union 9.13th [th is superscript] Indiana Regt 11.Brest Works / 6.Battery Mass; printed, in ink, lower center: Camp of Massachusetts Sixth Regt,, Vols,, Suffolk, Va. [in script] / Published by I.C.Eastman Bookseller & Stationer Lowell Mass. / From an original drawing in possesion [sic] of Col A.S.Follansbee; inscribed, in graphite, on reverse, lower left: 970007

Label

In 2006, Fred Wilson curated his exhibition So Much Trouble in the World—Believe it or Not! at the Hood Museum of Art. During his research, in which he mined and re-installed the museum’s collection, Wilson discovered John Henry Bufford’s 1863 print depicting a camp of Massachusetts regiment Union soldiers. Barely visible, a Black washerwoman at the edge of the site hangs a sheet to dry. By replicating the print and pairing it with a punctured glassine that draws the eye to focus on this woman, Wilson entirely reconstructed the image to acknowledge the labor of African Americans throughout the Civil War. The alteration also reveals the racial hierarchy maintained across the Union and Confederacy.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

A translucent piece of glassine is laid over a reproduction of John Henry Bufford’s 19th-century print depicting the camp of the Sixth Regiment Infantry, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, during the Civil War. A small hole cut into the overlay draws attention to a tiny detail, an African American woman slightly outside the camp boundaries washing clothes. This intervention takes an easily overlooked figure, who in the original artwork is far from the primary action, and places the focus on her and her role in the war. Wilson’s method does not hide the image’s original story; he simply makes a visual gesture toward a type of labor done by Black women that was necessary for military success but is often overlooked in historical records.

From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)

Course History

ENGL 62.22/AAAS 88.11, Atlantic Slavery to Atlantic Freedom, Alysia Garrison, Winter 2021

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

ANTH 50.21/AAAS 88.17, Filmmaking & Visual Culture, Jesse Shipley, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5-April 18, 2022.

Provenance

Pace Editions, Inc. and Fred Wilson, New York, New York; given to present collection, 2006.

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Subjects