Photograph by Gordon Parks
Courtesy of copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation
EXHIBIT: May 12th – July 9th, 2017
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION: May 12th from 6-8pm
(during Mount Dora Art Splash)
EXHIBIT LECTURES:
Dr. Scott French, May 18th at 6:30pm
Vivian Owens, June 13th at 6:30pm
Segregation Story, a collection of photographs by Gordon Parks, a noted African American photographer, musician, writer and film director will be exhibited. Parks is known for his photos documenting segregation in the south. Parks’ work has been reserved through The Gordon Parks Foundation.
This project uses the photo-journalistic art of Parks, who died in 2006 as a springboard for discussion about history, ethics and the current social and political environment.
A lecture by Dr. Scott French, will focus on the forms that segregation took in “progressive” Southern towns of Central Florida, and the relevance of history to our current conversations on race.
Dr. Scott French is an Associate Professor of Digital & Public History at the University of Central Florida. Dr. French will speak at the Mount Dora Center for the Arts on May 18 at 6:30.
Accompanying the Parks exhibit is a collection of photographs on loan from the W.T. Bland Library in Mount Dora. “School Days at Milner Rosenwald Academy”
Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck with the encouragement of his friend Booker T. Washington helped fund schools in black communities. By the early 1930s, there were 5,000 “Rosenwald schools” in the South. The Mount Dora school building still exists and was last used as a Head Start school.
