March 15, 2024
Beach Museum of Art’s Gordon Parks exhibition tours nationally, staff organize and present at Gordon Parks convening
The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art's 2021–2022 Gordon Parks exhibition, co-curated by Beach Museum staff Aileen June Wang and Sarah Price, will soon travel to six venues around the country beginning in fall 2024.
The tour is organized by the Beach Museum of Art with major support from Art Bridges, a foundation led by philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton that aims to expand access to American art across the country. The first stop is Syracuse University Art Museum in August. Wang will deliver the keynote presentation there in early September.
Learn more about the museum's exhibition and its open-access digital catalog, part of a collaboration with K-State English. Major support for the catalog comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
K-State English maintains the open-access website The Learning Tree: A Gordon Parks Digital Archive, also supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In addition to the traveling exhibition, Wang and Kirk Sharp, Gordon Parks museum director, are organizing a convening March 20-22 for the six host museums in Fort Scott, generously supported by Art Bridges, with additional support from Fort Scott Community College and the Gordon Parks Museum.
Fort Scott was Gordon Parks' birthplace and the site of his autobiographical film "The Learning Tree." Hosting the convening there gives participants the opportunity to experience sites of significance in Parks' life, including the Gordon Parks Museum at Fort Scott Community College. Convening presenters include Andrew F. Scott, associate professor of arts and technology at the University of Texas Dallas, and Beach Museum of Art staff.
In the final session of the convening, Nate McClendon, Beach Museum of Art specialist, and his band will present an interpretation of the Gordon Parks exhibition through music and narration. Admission to this performance is free and open to the public, courtesy of Art Bridges. The performance is at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 21, at the Danny and Willa Ellis Family Fine Arts Center Auditorium at Fort Scott Community College, 2108 Horton St., Fort Scott, KS 66701.