Commissioned by the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York, with the partnership of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, the ten-screen Lessons of the Hour is an immersive installation, hung salon-style to create what Julien describes as a ‘moving image montage’. The work’s presentation not only echoes the picture-hanging conventions of the era but allows the artist to draw connections between many images at once without relegating any particular detail to the background. It was shot with 35mm film and 4k digital technology at sites in the United States and United Kingdom, including Washington, DC, at The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, where Douglass lived late in life, and where his house in Cedar Hill has been kept conserved as it was during the abolitionist’s time. In Scotland, where Douglass was an active member of the ‘Send Back the Money’ movement, and where he delivered a number of anti-slavery speeches, Julien has reconstructed scenes of Douglass’ life. His speeches have been restaged inside London’s Royal Academy of Arts to an audience which includes both nineteenth century characters, and also contemporary, real-life characters such as scholars and Royal Academicians. Douglass delivered more than 300 lectures in England, Scotland and Ireland as he sought to affirm his struggle for equality as a global citizen, who was very much ahead of his time.

Following its premier at Memorial Art Gallery in 2019, Lessons of the Hour has been shown at venues including SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. Its West Coast debut will take place at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, California, 14 October 2020–13 March 2021.

Isaac Julien, CBE RA (born 1960) is a critically acclaimed British artist and filmmaker. In 2018, Julien joined UC Santa Cruz where he is the distinguished professor of the arts and leads the IJ Lab together with Arts Professor Mark Nash. Recent international solo exhibitions include: Isaac Julien: Western Union: Small Boats, Neuberger Museum, New York (2020); Isaac Julien: Frederick Douglass: Lessons of the Hour, ​SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2019); Looking for Langston at Tate Britain (2019); and Playtime at LACMA (2019). Julien has previously exhibited at venues including Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), Art Institute of Chicago (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2012), and Pompidou Centre Paris (2005).