Gordon Parks
Martin Luther King Jr.
MLK & the Civil Rights Movement
Matthew Hong

This feature honors Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Photography by Bruce Davidson, Yoichi Okamoto, Gordon Parks, James Karales, Steve Schapiro, Marion S. Trikosko, and Bob Adelman.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day – The official namesake national holiday in the U.S. which falls on the 3rd Monday of January and not always on his birthday (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), has itself had a history of struggle in first becoming law in 1983, with general observances in all 50 states virtually needing a mandate starting only in the year 2000.

Through some strange social contract, the civil inequities have only been transformed into legal institutionalized violence which continues to this day and the very notion of equality as an ideal is under attack by certain extreme right wing groups – or not so extreme as it turns out – some of whose most ardent champions and known associates continue to occupy seats in Congress and openly serve at the White House.

Now, over half a century after MLK’s assassination, the country still has a long journey ahead.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • Between Us
    Sep 1 – Oct 15, 2023
    Alexander Gray Associates
    New York, USA

    Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents Between Us, an exhibition gathering works by an intergenerational group of queer artists advancing the practice of portraiture. Confronting the cyclical progress and backlash of the last forty years, these artists bear witness to civil rights and gay liberation movements, the AIDS crisis, the rise of online communities, and the recurring culture wars around LGBTQIA+ rights (more…)

  • Mat Collishaw: Alluvion
    Jun 6 – Oct 15, 2023
    M77 Gallery
    Milan, Italy

    Alluvion, an exhibition of the works of British artist and intellectual Mat Collishaw, curated by Danilo Eccher, will be open to the public at M77 Gallery, Via Mecenate 77, from June 7 to October 15, 2023. Alluvion represents a new landscape modelled by material deposited by floodwaters, just as digital media floods our daily life and changes the social co-ordinates through which we manage communication, making us dependent on a world increasingly mechanised and controlled by technology, an image we find in most of Collishaw’s work. (more…)