History Remixed at High Museum

Two landmark new exhibitions are now on view at The High Museum of Art in Midtown as part of History Remixed. The exhibitions, Road to Freedom, Photographas of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 and After 1968, continue through Oct. 5. These are two not to be missed.

Road to Freedom features work by more than twenty photographers, with recognized names such as Bob Adelman, Morton Broffman, Bruce Davidson, Doris Derby, Larry Fink, James Karales, Builder Levy, and Steve Schapiro. Also included is the work of press photographers and amateurs who made stirring visual documents of marches, demonstrations and public gatherings out of a conviction for the social changes that the movement represented. Key photographs include Bob Adelman's Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, 1963; Morton Broffman's Dr. King and Coretta Scott King Leading Marchers, Montgomery, Alabama, 1965; Bill Eppridge's Chaney Family as they depart for the Funeral of James Chaney, Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964; and Builder Levy's I Am a Man/Union Justice Now, Memphis, Tennessee, 1968.

Supplementing the photographs are archival documents, newspapers, magazines and posters from the period. These complementary materials demonstrate how, in the hands of community organizers and newspaper and magazine editors, photographs played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion. Documents such as Rosa Parks' fingerprint paperwork and the blueprint of the bus on which she protested are shown alongside related photographs for the very first time. Also included will be several contemporary portraits, by photographer Eric Etheridge, of the young men and women who challenged segregation as Freedom Riders in 1961 and who are now senior citizens. All the photographs and documents in this exhibition will be accompanied by descriptive captions and an audio-visual component to provide deeper historical context.

Two significant groups of photographs in Road to Freedom have recently been acquired by the High. A portfolio of twenty-eight photographs by Danny Lyon, a leading photographer of the Civil Rights Movement, was given to the High Museum by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., in 2006. Turner acquired them directly from Lyon in the 1990s, when he was hired as a photographer on the TNT movie Freedom Song about the 1960s campaign for voting rights in Mississippi. The portfolio includes photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Representative John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy and other movement leaders.

The second is a group of thirty-three vintage photographs by Washington, D.C.-based freelance photographer Morton Broffman. In addition to working for several major publications, Broffman was the photographer for The Cathedral Age, the magazine of the Washington National Cathedral, for more than twenty-five years until his death in 1992. He was a campaign photographer for Senator Eugene McCarthy, who ran for president in 1968, and took numerous photographs of the Civil Rights gatherings in Washington, D.C, and in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. His collection includes images of marchers and movement leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Representative John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Joan Baez and James Baldwin. The photographs were given to the High by the Broffman family in 2006 in honor of the artist.

After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy includes newly commissioned and recently produced work by ten emerging contemporary artists. Conceived in tandem with Road to Freedom: Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement, this exhibition takes the transformative year of 1968 as its departure point.

These artists—born in or after 1968—have processed the visual and historical data of that year, including images from the High Museum of Art's singular archive of civil rights photographs. They have created works in all media that honor the legacy of the civil rights movement while exploring its ongoing relevancy and influence upon subsequent generations in diverse ways.

The exhibition explores how each artist's experience of and relationship to culture and their own artistic practice has been informed by the freedoms engendered by the Civil Rights movement. For some of the artists, the images of 1968 provide context and serve as inspiration; for others, it is the ethos and spirit of progressive change that 1968 represents that inspires their work. All the artists approach issues of race, identity, commodity culture, American violence, and personal agency with fresh eyes, aware that their inherited legacy shapes a distinct worldview that is in some way a tangible legacy of that radical time.

For more information, visit www.high.org.