Gordon Parks photographs on display at KU Spencer Museum of Art

LAWRENCE -- A group of Gordon Parks photographs are on display through March 23 at the Spencer Museum of Art in the fourth floor study gallery at the University of Kansas.

These photographs are presented in conjunction with the "Evening Honoring Gordon Parks" at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Lied Center, as part of the Langston Hughes February Festival: Celebrating Kansas Writers and Artists.

The Parks photographs include his famous 1942 image "American Gothic, Washington, D.C.," which shows Ella Watson, a cleaning woman in the offices of the Farm Security Administration, posed with mop and broom before an American flag to suggest the difficulty African-Americans had gaining access to the American dream.

Other Parks photographs on display chronicle aspects of minority status in the United States and include "Black Children with White Doll," "Malcolm X Selling Newspaper" and "Man Peeking from Manhole, Harlem."

Parks began his photography career working for the Farm Security Administration, the government agency created in the 1930s to document the effects of the Depression. In 1948 he began his influential career in photojournalism at Life magazine. Although best known as a photographer, Parks also is an author, film director, poet, composer and painter.

The photographs appear alongside the Opportunity Art Portfolio, which is the product of a 1926 collaboration between artist Aaron Douglas and poet Langston Hughes, and Betye Saar's handsomely designed book of texts by Zora Neale Hurston, both recent Spencer Museum of Art acquisitions.

The Spencer Museum of Art, 1301 Mississippi St., is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free; donations are welcome.