Dialogues with artists and scholars held in conjunction with Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950. Conversations will explore some of the inspiring cooperative relationships between artists and American communities. Presentation topics will range from the history of government support for artists and community centers during the 1930s and 1940s, to the impact of community programs on Parks’s development as a photographer, to examples of how artists are working today. The exhibition, which will be open through February 18, revisits the meteoric development of Parks as a photographer, his social documentary, industrial, fashion, and film work, and the meaning of this work in picturing and representing the African diaspora.
Registration is free but required; register here. Seating is available on a first-come, first seated basis.
The symposium will be streamed live here.
10:30–10:35
Introduction
Sarah Greenough, senior curator and head, department of photographs,
National Gallery of Art
10:35–11:20
Keynote Address: Boarding the Voyage
Robin Coste Lewis, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and Provost’s Fellow in Poetry and Visual Studies, University of Southern California
11:20–11:30 BREAK
11:30–12:30
Artists and Communities: Then
Melanee C. Harvey, assistant professor, department of art, Howard University
Kellie Jones, professor, department of art history and archaeology, and faculty fellow, Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS), Columbia University
Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University, and Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art
Laura Wexler, professor of American studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and film and media studies, affiliate faculty in ethnicity, race, and migration, cochair, public humanities program, director, The Photographic Memory Workshop, and primary investigator, The Photogrammar Project, Yale University
12:30–1:00
Discussion
Moderated by Anjuli J. Lebowitz, exhibition research associate, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art
1:00–2:30 BREAK
2:30–3:30
Artists and Communities: Now
Devin Allen, artist and 2017 fellow, The Gordon Parks Foundation
Eric Gottesman, artist and cofounder, For Freedoms, and assistant professor of photography, Purchase College, State University of New York
Rick Lowe, artist, founder, Project Row Houses, and clinical associate professor of art, University of Houston
Maséqua Myers, executive director, South Side Community Art Center
3:30–3:40 BREAK
3:40
Discussion
Moderated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator, department of photographs,
National Gallery of Art
Made possible by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation.