Joe and Emily Lowe Galleries
August 22-December 8, 2024
This exhibition features photographs selected and donated by Parks to Kansas State University in 1973. Becoming a kind of self-portrait, the gift expresses wide-ranging artistic ideas beyond documentary photography. Parks created new narratives and thematic groups from such assignments as Paris fashions, Fort Scott Revisited, and Muhammad Ali to reflect his thoughts on photography as a fine art medium and his work vis à vis celebrated paintings and sculptures. As a result, the gift becomes a kind of self-portrait expressing Parks’ wide-ranging artistic ideas beyond documentary photography. Most significantly, the photographs instigate cultural change by challenging viewers to imagine a more inclusive culture than the one they know: a world where Black skin represents ideal beauty, where an African American athlete embodies the exemplary hero, and where an artist of African heritage has a place within the lineage of excellent artists in Western art history.
Gordon Parks (1912 – 2006) – renowned photographer, writer, poet, musician, and composer – was born and raised in the segregated town of Fort Scott in Southeast Kansas. Parks left his hometown at fifteen and did not return until decades later, after he became LIFE magazine’s first African American staff photographer. The return sparked a new relationship between the artist and Kansas. In 1968, Parks filmed parts of his first film, The Learning Tree, in Fort Scott. In the early 1970s, he visited Manhattan, Kansas, multiple times and donated a personally curated group of photographs to Kansas State University, the first to a public institution. That collection now resides in the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
This exhibition presents selections from that gift and shows its significance as a kind of self-portrait created by Parks. The exhibition’s title comes from a poem Parks wrote in 1984, when he was in Manhattan for an artist residency. Homeward to the Prairie I Come is part of the K-State Gordon Parks Project initiated by the Beach Museum of Art and K-State Department of English. K-State English maintains The Learning Tree: A Gordon Parks Digital Archive, which provides access to archival materials and oral histories about the filming in Fort Scott.
This exhibition is co-curated by Aileen June Wang, Ph.D., curator; and Sarah Price, registrar; at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University. Generous support for this exhibition, along with its related outreach and programming, are provided by the Art Bridges Foundation, the Wege Foundation, and Syracuse University Humanities Center, Syracuse Symposium.
Kansas State’s New Prairie Press released an open access digital exhibition catalog with essays from Gordon Parks scholars at K-State. Click here to view the digital exhibition catalog.
We are excited to offer a Family Guide that was created by our team of educators to explore the exhibition “Homeward to the Prairie I Come”: Gordon Parks Photographs from the Beach Museum of Art”
Featured events accompanying the exhibition include:
Opening Reception and Keynote
September 6, 4 – 6:30 pm
- Gordon Parks’s Curated Photographs and His Ideas About Community
4 – 5 pm
Location: 160 Link Hall - Reception 5 – 6:30 pm
Location: Syracuse University Art Museum
The Duke Ellington Orchestra
presented in partnership with the Malmgren Concert Series
September 22, 4pm
Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University
Community Screening of Shaft (1971), directed by Gordon Parks
October 4, 7 pm
The Westcott Theater
524 Westcott St., Syracuse, NY 13210
Get tickets in advance!
Community Day
October 5, noon – 4pm
Syracuse University Art Museum
Art Break: Gordon Parks with Nancy Keefe Rhodes
October 16, noon
Syracuse University Art Museum
Celebrating Gordon Parks
November 9
- 1 pm: Art Break with Contemporary photographer Jarod Lew
- 2: 30 pm: Screening of A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks (2021)
- Pop up exhibitions featuring artwork from youth participants in the PAL Program!
- Community vendors in Shaffer Galleria!
Art Break: Gordon Parks Fashion Photography with Jeff Mayer and Lauren Tagliaferro
November 13 at 5:30 p.m.
Gordon Parks Community Gathering/ Showcase
December 7, timing TBD
Deedee’s Community Room, Salt City Market, 484 S. Salina St., Syracuse, NY
Visit the museum’s website for more public programs surrounding the exhibition.
