Historical December 1990 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
I Dream A World: portraits of Black Women Who Changed America, features 75 photographs of remarkable women who made their mark on American life.
This special exhibition is at the St. Louis Art Museum, Forest Park, through January 6, 1991.
The exhibition encompasses two years of work by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Lanker.
The subjects on his large-scale, black-and-white photographs include women from all walks of life who have made valuable contributions to American society. Many of these women are prominent in fields ranging from arts and education to politics and the military.
A 168-page book, which is available in the Museum Shop, was published in conjunction with the exhibition and features full-page reproductions of the images by Lanker, interviews with each woman and a foreword by Maya Angelou.
In the book’s introduction, Lanker, who spent from 1987-1989 interviewing and photographing the women, describes the process of creating this powerful photographic essay.
He remarks: “My hope is that this project will allow readers and viewers to see something of those lives and feel the strength of those hearts for a brief moment, and to be informed by them and inspired by them as I have.” A 24-minute video, available for viewing throughout the exhibition, offers a thoughtful, behind-the-scenes look into the creative process as Lanker and his associates worked on I Dream A World.
The video will run continuously inside the Special Exhibition Galleries. Among those in the exhibition are six women who either come from, or live and work in, the St. Louis area.
They include Katherine Dunham, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Bertha Knox Gilkey, Maxine Waters, Faye Wattleton and Maya Angelou. I Dream a World includes Lanker’s black-and-white photographs of the 75 featured women accompanied by excerpts from his interviews. Speaking of the importance of the exhibition and catalogue, Lanker states, “This celebration of sisters is not an attempt to elevate or lower any segment of society, it is merely an opportunity to savor the triumphs of the human spirit, a spirit that does not speak only of black history. My greatest lesson was that this is my history, this is American history.” The original and second tours of I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America by Brian Lanker are circulated by the American Federation of Arts and made possible in part by generous grants from the Professional Photography Division of Eastman Kodak Company.
The original exhibition was organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and made possible in part by a major grant from US WEST Foundation.
The exhibition photographs were printed by Gary Schneider of Schneider/Erdman, New York, New York.
The St. Louis installation was made possible by the Southwestern Bell Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and by the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency.
Original photograph caption
Portrait of Willie Mae Ford Smith (b. 1904). © Brian Lanker 1989.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, December 1990.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1990_12.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
