Images from Depression-era Black America

In a landmark institutional collaboration, the Museum of Art + Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, KS and Art Bridges Foundation current “Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Great Depression South,” a compelling new exhibition that reexamines the Farm Security Administration’s iconic pictures by means of a hardly ever instructed story: the intimate lives and communal environments of Black Americans in rural Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Carolina simply after the Great Depression, throughout the Thirties and ’40s. The photos, commissioned by the FSA, have been taken by photographers comparable to Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, and others. The exhibition can be on view August 20, 2025, to March 9, 2026.

“Through these compelling government-commissioned photographs, we can get a more nuanced view of how the Great Depression impacted Americans, specifically Black Americans, and their resilience in the face of adversity at the time,” MoA+L government director Erin Dragotto.

Curated by Tamir Williams, PhD, Curatorial Associate at Art Bridges, Crafting Sanctuaries brings to mild lesser-known FSA pictures that doc how Black Southerners created areas of resilience, refuge, and identification amid widespread financial hardship and systemic oppression.

In 1935, Roy E. Stryker, head of the FSA’s Information Division, recruited a gaggle of photographers to undertake an formidable mission: to create a large photograph documentation of the dwelling situations of agricultural employees within the rural American South. With their photograph gear, rolls of movie, and journey itineraries in hand, every photographer got down to seize sincere scenes of on a regular basis life for these Southern Americans who felt the devastating financial results of The Great Depression.

These hardly ever circulated pictures captured over the mission’s roughly nine-year span paint a nuanced image of the Great Depression-era American South; the pictures that Stryker later chosen for mass public circulation supplied a really slender view of those Southern areas and their inhabitants. The exhibition presents a wider various than the distributed photos, and thru pictures of properties, church buildings, colleges, and barbershops, the exhibition reveals how inside and public gathering areas grew to become canvases for self-determination and cultural preservation.

“The spaces captured in these photographs were not just shelters—they were sanctuaries,” says Williams. “They speak to how Black Southerners created places of refuge, affirmation, and self-determination, even in the harshest of circumstances. This exhibition seeks to change how we imagine the Great Depression as a largely white tragedy, and expand it to see that it impacted everyone across America.”

The exhibition is introduced in tandem with the interpretive space Sanctuary in Motion, which invitations museum guests to replicate and reply to questions of house, group, settlement, and locations as sanctuaries related to Manhattan, Kansas’ Yuma Street District—a neighborhood that relates the ethnic historical past of Manhattan’s unique African American neighborhood previous and current. This area and historical past timeline is introduced in collaboration with the Yuma Street Cultural Center, a non-profit group based by the Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills, Manhattan, Kansas.

“Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great Depression South” is exhibited in dialogue with “Heritage & the Human Condition,” a solo exhibition of work by acclaimed African American modern artist Dean Mitchell, on view in an adjoining gallery area. Together, the 2 exhibitions supply an expansive view of Black life in America, from historic documentation to trendy interpretation, encouraging deeper dialogue round race, illustration, and belonging.

Organized by Art Bridges Foundation, “Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great Depression South” was curated by Tamir Williams (Curatorial Associate), with assist from Ashley Holland (Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives), Isabel Ouweleen (Curatorial Research Assistant), and Javier Rivero Ramos (Assistant Curator).

“Heritage & the Human Condition” is organized by the Museum of Art + Light and curated by Erin Dragotto, government director and Jori Louise Cheville, director of curatorial affairs. This exhibition has been generously supported by Kemper Family Foundations, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee and the Dennis & Carol Hudson Family Foundation. The exhibition is complemented with loaned paintings from the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and the non-public collections of Robert and Tracey DeBruyn and George and Julie Strecker.

About Art Bridges Foundation

Art Bridges Foundation is the imaginative and prescient of philanthropist and humanities patron Alice Walton. Founded in 2017, Art Bridges creates and helps tasks that share works of American artwork with communities throughout the United States and its territories. Art Bridges companions with a rising community of over 250 museums of many sizes—impacting greater than 20 million individuals nationwide—to supply monetary and strategic assist for exhibitions, assortment loans, and applications designed to teach, encourage, and deepen engagement with native communities.

The Art Bridges Collection represents an increasing imaginative and prescient of American artwork from the nineteenth century to current day and encompasses a number of media and voices.

For extra data, go to www.artbridgesfoundation.org.

About Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills

Founded and envisioned by the Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills, The Yuma Street Cultural Center is a revival of historical past, a celebration of tradition, and a catalyst for group empowerment. Nestled within the coronary heart of Manhattan’s historic Yuma Street neighborhood, the middle stands as a testomony to the resilience, braveness, and contributions of the African American group.

About the Museum of Art + Light

The Museum of Art + Light is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit modern artwork museum devoted to merging Twenty first-century expertise with the visible and performing arts to incite optimistic emotion, domesticate significant connections, encourage creative exploration, and spark innovation.  Through strategic collaborations, the Museum fosters creativity, connection, and innovation by exploring the boundless intersections of artwork, ideas of sunshine, and digital media.

Visit www.artlightmuseum.org for updates.