The Museum is pleased to announce the forthcoming exhibition, Dissent in 1960s America: The Photography of Ken Thompson. On view from January 26 to April 3 in the Becker Gallery—a space designed for faculty and student-curated installations—this exhibition explores the work of a talented, documentary photographer, who recorded many of the most important social and political events of the 1960s. Thompson worked during this decade as a staff photographer at the General Board of Global Ministries, an organization connected with the United Methodist Church. Rarely exhibited or published, his photographs provide an eyewitness account of the civil rights movement, voter registration efforts in the South, the aftermath of the Watts riot, and anti-poverty and anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

Jennifer Scanlon, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities in Gender and Women’s Studies, worked with the Thompson Archive in the research for her book, Until There Is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman, which will be published by Oxford University Press this February. Earlier this year she alerted the Museum about this rich photographic collection and opened the door for the loan of thirty vintage prints for a special exhibition. Museum intern Frances E. Gurzenda ’16 researched the selection of images and curated the exhibition with support from co-director Frank H. Goodyear. The exhibition includes a portrait of Hedgeman, an important civil rights leader, which Scanlon will discuss in a gallery conversation on February 25.