Walker received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. At her new high school, Walker recalls, 'I was called a ' nigger,' told I looked like a monkey, accused (I didn't know it was an accusation) of being a ' Yankee.'' In sharp contrast with the multi-cultural environment of coastal California, Stone Mountain still held Ku Klux Klan rallies. The move was a culture shock for the young artist. They settled in the city of Stone Mountain. When Walker was 13, her father accepted a position at Georgia State University. Born in 1969, she grew up in an integrated California suburb, part of a generation for whom the uplift and fervor of the civil rights movement and the want-it-now anger of Black Power were yesterday's news.' A 2007 review in the New York Times described her early life as calm, noting that 'nothing about very early life would seem to have predestined her for this task. Her mother Gwendolyn was an administrative assistant. Her father, Larry Walker, was a painter and professor. Walker was born in 1969 in Stockton, California. Walker is regarded as among the most prominent and acclaimed Black American artists working today. She has been the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2015. Walker was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1997, at the age of 28, becoming one of the youngest ever recipients of the award. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work.

Kara Walker by Robert F. Reid-Pharr