Howard University To Debut New Art Exhibition By Gordon Parks In Early 2025

Courtesy of Howard University

A new art exhibition is coming to Howard University in early 2025. Photographer Gordon Parks’ exhibition will run from Feb. 20, 2025, through Dec. 5, 2025. It will be presented by the Moorland Spingarn Research Center.

According to a press release, the exhibition “underexplored religious and spiritual examinations through his photographs that captured the prominent role of religion and spirituality in 20th-century modern life.”

“We are excited to showcase images from the newly acquired Gordon Parks Legacy Collection for the first time at Howard University and provide the opportunity for students to respond to and engage with Gordon Parks’ legacy,” MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton said in the same press release.

The exhibition features over 50 objects, including photos and archival documents from the Legacy Collection that Howard acquired in 2022.

Dr. Melanee C. Harvey, associate professor at Howard, has worked tirelessly to curate the upcoming exhibition.

“Gordon Parks’ photography has long been a fixture in the documentation of Black life in America,” Harvey said. “With contemporary developments in Black religious studies and the history of photography, we saw it necessary to engage with Parks’ insightful perspective on how Black religious and spiritual traditions impact the environment and the communities from which they emerge.”

Along with the exhibition, a publication entitled Gordon Parks, Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, 1953 will be available. It contains two short essays with the first one describing Parks’ first experience at Howard in 1942. The other will “explore the rich photographic history preserved in the collections of Moorland Spingarn Research Center.”

Next fall, Temples of Hope will be exhibited at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery in Pleasantville, New York.