A set of traveling exhibits owned by Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System are prepped and ready to live up to the name.
“Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South” and “Through the Lens of Carl Brown: Lowndes County, Mississippi in the 1940s-1950s,” are the two exhibits being offered by CLPLS.
The Pruitt exhibit offers six panels from the1910s through the 1960s.
“His pictures provide a candid and ultimately disturbing visual history of the inequality of that era in the Jim Crow American South and serve as an invaluable resource for those interested in civil rights, photography, and American history,” read the release from CLPLS.
The Brown exhibit consists of 20 framed photographs featuring Lowndes County from the 1940s through the 1950s.
“Brown captured images of the local and surrounding communities including portraits, proms, parades, clubs, businesses, events, car accidents, churches, fairs, agriculture, houses, recitals, animals and copy work,” the release read. “His work showcases the lives and history of a Mississippi city from the mid to late twentieth century.”
The two exhibits are up for loan for free to institutions such as archives, libraries, museums and other public indoor venues. The exhibits are only available for use in institutions in Mississippi and Alabama, and can be booked for eight-week stints.
“The public library’s new traveling exhibits program offers other communities an opportunity to learn about the rich history of the Lowndes County area,” CLPLS Archivist Mona Vance-Ali said. “The two exhibits currently available reveal, through photographic materials, how the past can be used to reflect upon our past in order to examine current events.”
“Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town” was funded by the Friends of the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System. It was curated by Berkley Hudson, Columbus native and associate professor at the University of Missouri. It was produced by Curatorial, Inc.
The exhibit “Through the Lens of Carl Brown” was funded through a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council along with assistance from the Friends of the Columbus- Lowndes Public Library System, and the Stephen D. Lee High School Foundation. It was curated by Vance-Ali.
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