Every Copy of Our Spring Issue Comes with a Print by Kara Walker

The drawing, Little Sorrel's Sorry Saga, was made in preparation for Unmanned Drone, her reconfigured Stonewall Jackson sculpture.

Mar. 11, 2026 at 6:08pm

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When a monument to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was decommissioned in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2021, curator Hamza Walker managed to get ahold of it and transported it to a warehouse in New Jersey. He then offered it to the artist Kara Walker, inviting her to do with it as she pleased at a foundry in upstate New York. Walker has recombined the monument's parts to form Unmanned Drone (2023), a 12-foot statue melding the general with his horse, named Little Sorrel. The sculpture is on view through May 3 at the Brick in LA, where Hamza Walker is director, in a show called 'Monuments,' co-presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Why it matters

Amid federal initiatives to restore Confederate monuments to public view, Walker's powerful retort renders at least one reversion impossible, insisting: We can't put it back like it was.

The details

Kara Walker's print, Little Sorrel's Sorry Saga (Who Else?), 2023–25, is a version of an ink drawing she made in preparation for Unmanned Drone. In both versions, we see Jackson rendered less as horseman, more as horse-man hybrid—a gesture that nods toward the persistent myths attending the Civil War and evokes the four horsemen of the apocalypse. More simply, he is revealed to be a grotesque monster, looming large but also arrested and maybe even collapsing, his sword dragging low on the floor.

  • In 2021, a monument to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was decommissioned in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  • In 2023, Kara Walker's sculpture Unmanned Drone, featuring the recombined parts of the Stonewall Jackson monument, went on view at the Brick in LA through May 3.

The players

Kara Walker

An artist who has been deftly probing the dark sides of American history since the 1990s, transforming its iconography until it reveals the violence too often lurking underneath.

Hamza Walker

A curator who managed to get ahold of the Stonewall Jackson monument after it was decommissioned in Charlottesville, Virginia, and transported it to a warehouse in New Jersey, where he offered it to Kara Walker to do with as she pleased.

Little Sorrel

The name of Stonewall Jackson's famous little red horse, a creature who outlived not only Jackson but also thousands of Civil War veterans before dying in 1886.

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What’s next

The sculpture Unmanned Drone, featuring the recombined parts of the Stonewall Jackson monument, will remain on view at the Brick in LA through May 3.

The takeaway

Kara Walker's powerful retort to Confederate monuments, Unmanned Drone, renders at least one reversion impossible, insisting that we can't put the past back the way it was. Her reconfiguration of the Stonewall Jackson monument into a grotesque hybrid form reveals the violence and myths underlying such memorials.