Celebrating the Life and Works of Gordon Parks

Exhibition Info

About the Exhibition

This Gordon Parks Themed Exhibition is open to all to all work, big or small, inspired the work of the visionary creator. For this show we invited you, COMD students, to respond to the life and work of Parks in any medium. Or rather, to choose as your “weapon”.

The response was completely overwhelming! You have spoken in a resounding voice, across all of the creative disciplines we teach. You, like Parks are using your creative “weapons to stand against the things you dislike about America”. We are so very proud of all of you: our artists, illustrators, designers, photographers, filmmakers, communicators, problem-solvers, change-makers and strategists. 

Best in Show and Honorable Mention honors will be awarded during the April 29th Panel Discussion.  Visit the Gordon Parks themed Student Show  site to view the full exhibition.

 

The Missing Chapter: Black Chronicles

Introduction to the Missing Chapter: Exhibition in a Box

Exhibition Info

  • February 4th – March 6th, 2020
  • Grace Gallery Panel Discussion: Tuesday, February 11 , 11:30am – 12:45pm
    Panelists George Larkins, Robin Michals and Emilie Boone
    Facilitated by Sara Woolley
  • Co-curated and organized by Sara Woolley & Emilie Boone
  • Exhibition Poster

About the exhibition:

Autograph’s pop-up photography display featuring 30 remarkable image panels, reproduced from rare 19th-century photographs portraying people of African, Caribbean and South Asian descent during the Victorian era in Britain.

Part of The Missing Chapter project, which aims to bring together a distinct body of photographs that showcases diverse ‘black presences’ in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, offering a unique portrait of black lives and migrant experiences during the decades following the birth of photography in 1839.

They portray a diverse range of people living and working in Britain at the time, from politicians to performers to service men and women. Their collective presence bears direct witness to the nation’s colonial and imperial history, and the expansion of the British Empire during the 19th and 20th Centuries.

These portraits reveal an important, complex black presence in Britain before the SS Empire Windrush steamship arrived in 1948, which is often cited as a key moment in the emergence of a multicultural British society.

Photographed in commercial studios in the latter half of the 19th century, many lay buried deep within the archives for decades, unseen for more than 125 years.

Collections represented include Autograph, Hulton Archive (a division of Getty Images), National Portrait Gallery, Royal Collection Trust as well as the private collections of Val Wilmer, Michael Graham-Stewart, Amoret Tanner/FotoLibra and Paul Frecker/Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography. 

More information about the project.

Black / Excellence

black excellence poster

BLACK / EXCELLENCE is the story of visual artist, Khary Randolph’s multifaceted illustration career. This month-long solo exhibition is free and open to the public.
Randolph’s bold style breaks from comics tradition, drawing on influences such as Saul Bass, Norman Rockwell, and HIP-HOP. He maintains throughout his diverse body of work a clear artistic voice and unapologetically addresses issues of representation, race, class, and diversity in a medium historically dominated by one-dimensional white male power fantasies.

The works on display are a generous gift of the artist to the department of Communication Design at New York City College of Technology and will be made available to the public for the purposes of fundraising, helping to educate and launch the careers of the industry’s next generation of creators.

BLACK / EXCELLENCE will be on View in the City Tech Grace Gallery from 9/26 through 10/ 31 2019.