In 1992, the contemporary African American artist Fred Wilson, known for his interventions that challenge assumptions of history, culture, race, and conventions of display in museums, gifted a work of art to the Jewish Museum collection on the occasion of the Museum’s 1992 Purim Ball. The work is a two-layered, ink on acetate print, that combines a sixteenth-century engraving of Queen Esther, the biblical queen who saved the Persian Jews during the time of Xerxes, and an iconic photograph of Harriet Tubman, the black woman born enslaved, who escaped to freedom and then returned to the South to free enslaved black people.

Wilson's double portrait portrays Tubman over Queen Esther, as if she is wearing a mask. The image suggests the similarities of the two heroines of black and Jewish histories, and the enduring mythology that surrounds the women, who risked their lives to save their persecuted peoples.

-Antwaun Sargent, Guest Contributor