The Hunter Museum of American Art will open another photography exhibit on March 20, featuring select photographic works by taken by photographer and writer Eudora Welty, two days before the closing of the exhibit, The New York Times Magazine Photographs.
Review for Eudora Welty and the Segregated South Exhibit:
Discover some of the most striking Depression-era images taken by famed photographer and writer Eudora Welty. The Pulitzer prize-winner is known as one of America’s premier writers, but fewer people know that she was also an accomplished photographer. Her photographs, like her writing, explored both sides of the color line in the Jim Crow South of her Mississippi home.
In the 1930s, Ms. Welty was hired by the Works Progress Administration to conduct interviews in her home region. While on assignment, she began to photograph the people she met, sensitively inquiring into the cultural and economic impact of segregation—which was codified into “Jim Crow” laws in the South—on the state’s majority black population. Her photography also questioned the monolithic notion of whiteness by showing the various experiences of whites based on their class and gender. Through her curiosity, depth of observation, and sly humor, Ms. Welty makes the color line visible to her audience. Later, she recalled that it was her experience as a WPA photographer that inspired the honest and penetrating voice that characterized her writing. She explained that while working for the WPA, “my feelings were engaged by the outside world, I think for the first time.”
In connection with the Eudora Welty and the Segregated South exhibit, the Hunter Museum will host its second annual Undergraduate Student Symposium on the topic of The Gothic Imaginary. Students from across the region studying the arts and humanities will present research and create a dialogue related to this theme. For more information, contact Rachel White at rwhite@huntermuseum.org.
This exhibit is on-loan from the Knoxville Museum of Art and will be on-view at the Hunter Museum beginning Friday, March 20, through Sunday, July 12. General admission is $9.95 for adults and $4.95 for children. To learn about this exhibit and other happenings at the Hunter Museum, visit huntermuseum.org.