A Choice of Weapons, Honor and Dignity: The Visions of Gordon Parks, Jamel Shabazz
Minnesota Museum of American Art (the M) is presenting A Choice of Weapons, Honor and Dignity: The Visions of Gordon Parks and Jamel Shabazz through April 19.
This exhibition includes photographs that document expressions of dignity, honor, hope, and love in the African-American community by two towering photographers. Featured works include Gordon Parks’ astonishing images from the Jim Crow-era through the civil rights movement, and photographs by Brooklyn-based artist Jamel Shabazz, who has followed in Parks’ footsteps from the 1980s to the present day. A Choice of Weapons, Honor and Dignity explores how Parks and Shabazz have both used photography to empower communities and lift up Black voices.
The exhibition is curated by Robin Hickman-Winfield, CEO and Executive Producer of SoulTouch Productions and a great-niece of Gordon Parks, with the help of four Gordon Parks High School Scholars and curatorial advisors, Travell Williams, Andrew Shorty, Amelia Pharmer, and Tyrell Horton, Choice of Weapons Fellow and Gordon Parks Legacy Movement Program Assistant. Key components of the communications and marketing strategies were designed by the BrandLab interns Elijah Buchanan, Waylon Rembert Jr., and Charvaye Williams.
Hickman-Winfield (with the help of M Trustee Nathan Johnson) will also be assembling a Vision Council of distinguished black men in the Twin Cities. This transgenerational group will meet at the M to discuss how this exhibition can serve as a platform for healing and for lifting up Black voices.
Free Admission. The M at 350 Robert St North, St. Paul. Open Wed, Fri, Sat and Sun, 11am-5pm; Thu 11am-8pm.
