Monroe Gallery of Photography specializes in 20th- and 21st-century photojournalism and humanist imagery—images that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society. They set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think—in a shared medium that is a singular intersectionality of art and journalism.
— Sidney and Michelle Monroe
Discover how the advent of the automobile brought new mobility and freedom for African Americans but also exposed them to discrimination and deadly violence, and how that history resonates today.
A ground-breaking, two-hour documentary film by acclaimed historian Dr. Gretchen Sorin and Emmy–winning director Ric Burns– will air on PBS on Tuesday, October 13, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. ET
NEW MEXICO PBS AND SANTA FE ART INSTITUTE PRESENT A SPECIAL
PREVIEW SCREENING OF ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED
DOCUMENTARY I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
SCREENING TO FEATURE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA PHOTO COLLECTION INCLUDING PORTRAITS OF JAMES BALDWIN AND DISCUSSION LED BY SFAI WORKS MANAGER KOURTNEY ANDAR
(Santa Fe, New Mexico) — New Mexico PBS and Santa Fe Art Institute are excited to present an Indie Lens Pop-Up screening of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, one of the most acclaimed films of the year and a 2017 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary.
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, to be called Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends — Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. But at the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of his manuscript.
Now, in this incendiary documentary, which premieres on New Mexico PBS Monday, January 15, 2018, 8:00 - 9:30 PM, filmmaker Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words, spoken by Samuel L. Jackson, and a flood of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.
"The Long Road: From Selma To Ferguson" an exhibition of photographs documenting the Civil Rights movement in America from the 1950's to the present day, curated by The Monroe Gallery of Photography, will be on view January 8 through January 19 at the Santa Fe Art Institute.
The exhibition comes at a time of heightened awareness, from political and social tensions in the aftermath of President Trump’s election, threats of “investigation for voter fraud“, the just concluded special election in Alabama, and conflicts across the racial divide in Charlottesville and other American Cities.
In 1963, photographers captured dramatic images of dogs and fire hoses turned on protesters that transformed national public opinion towards support of civil rights. At the time, there was a feeling in the movement that it took journalists, and especially photojournalists, covering the struggles to tell their story as history and visual evidence and shock the world.
Recently, documentary evidence has been denied or disputed by those in power, and coupled with the new administrations attacks on the press, the exhibit is a reminder that photojournalism is a vital and necessary component of a free society.
The exhibition features iconic photographs from the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand free-and-clear voting rights for African Americans. Other powerful photographs capture the heroes of the Civil Rights movement--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, James Baldwin, and John Lewis--but also the countless grass-roots organizers and anonymous marchers who risked everything to trudge a long, dusty, and violent path to equality. Also included in the exhibition are images from more recent keystones of the modern civil rights movement, including the Eric Garner killing in New York, modern KKK protests, and the unrest following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation’s eyes were riveted on Mississippi.
Over ten memorable weeks known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers joined with organizers and local African Americans in an historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, the nation’s most segregated state. The summer was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers.
In the face of this violence, these organizers, volunteers, and Mississippians worked together to canvass for voter registration, create Freedom Schools, and establish an alternative challenge to the State Democratic Party — the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Borne of Freedom Summer, and in response to the challenges of registering voters directly within hostile Mississippi, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party registered its own voters outside of the discriminatory system, ultimately sending a delegation of 68 members to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to confront and unseat the all-white delegation.
Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, The Murder of Emmett Till), FREEDOM SUMMER highlights an overlooked but essential element of the Civil Rights Movement: the patient and long-term efforts by both outside activists and local citizens in Mississippi to organize communities and register black voters — even in the face of intimidation, physical violence and death. The Freedom Summer story reminds us that the movement that ended segregation was far more complex than most of us know.
American Experience will broadcast the film this summer, which marks both the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision, which struck down key protections afforded by the landmark civil rights legislation borne of the political momentum generated by this historical movement — The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Join the Bronx Documentary Center this Saturday, July 12, at 8:15 PM for Freedom Summer
Film by Emmy award-winner Stanley Nelson followed by panel discussion with veterans of the 1964 Freedom Rides. The event is part of the Bronx Documentary Center’s summer exhibition and program series, The 60s: Decade of Change.
