- Exhibition Title
I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America
- Gallery
Focus Gallery
- Start Date
21 June 2011
- End Date
11 September 2011
- Description
A selection of 29 photograph's from Brian Lanker's exhibition "I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America".
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Arts presents selections from Brian Lanker’s “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America,” on view from June 21 – September 11, 2011 in the Focus Gallery.
Lanker passed away in March 2011, soon after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The JSMA honors the life of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer by showcasing photographs from the exhibition that originally debuted in Washington, D.C., in 1988 and showed at the UO Museum of Art in 1991.
Twenty-eight portraits are featured in the exhibition representing women from the fields of entertainment, literature, sports, and politics and the civil rights movement, including Rosa Parks, Toni Morrison, Coretta Scott King, Ruby Dee, Maya Angelou, Septima Poinsette Clark, and Althea Gibson. The book and original exhibition focused on the lives of 75 women.
Brian Lanker had long felt that the contributions of black women to society and history were unnoticed. Influenced by Barbara Jordan’s riveting speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention and Alice Walker’s life, after reading her book “The Color Purple,” Lanker began a two-year-long project to document and honor these and other special black women.
"I really did it more for history,” Lanker once said, “and thought it was important to have a book like this around 50 or 75 years from now so that people could look back and understand whose shoulders they were standing on.”
Using his personal knowledge and with access to “LIFE” magazine’s extensive archive, additional research at the Schomberg Center in Harlem, New York, and help from The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Lanker selected the 75 women to photograph and interview.- People
