Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Occupation | Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation |
Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. is an author and the executive director of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation [1] and its Gordon Parks Foundation. [2] [3]
Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Occupation | Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation |
Peter W. Kunhardt Jr. is an author and the executive director of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation [1] and its Gordon Parks Foundation. [2] [3]
Kunhardt is the son of documentary film maker Peter Kunhardt, who is a grandson of children's author Dorothy Kunhardt. His late aunt Nancy was married to George Cabot Lodge II of the "Boston Brahmin" family, the Lodges. Dorothy's father Frederick Hill Meserve first began collecting rare photographs of Abraham Lincoln and illustrated the Civil War diary penned by his father William, who had been wounded in the Battle of Antietam. [2]
Kunhardt graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he majored in art history. [4]
Kunhardt oversees the Gordon Parks Foundation's exhibitions, publications, critical research projects, and public programs organized with institutions internationally and its exhibition space in Pleasantville, New York, as well as the artist's archive. [5] As an extension of his role at the Foundation, Kunhardt also serves as series editor for Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation publications. [6]
Kunhardt has been involved with creating a number of museum exhibitions and catalogues. He has coedited, edited and coauthored books. He is responsible for the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation's acquisition of the archive of Life photographer Ed Clark and its preservation of the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of 19th century photography, which now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
Under his leadership, the Gordon Parks Foundation established the Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarships and Prizes program, which has conferred over $1 million in scholarships and prizes to more than 120 students at 10 educational institutions since its inception in 2009. Scholarship partner institutions include: Purchase College, State University of New York; Pratt Institute; New York University Tisch School of the Arts; Ghetto Film School; National YoungArts Foundation; Harlem School of the Arts; Fashion Institute of Technology; Columbia Journalism School. During his tenure, the Foundation also established the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, which has awarded eight fellowships to photographers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians whose work addresses themes of representation and social justice. In 2019, Kunhardt oversaw the launch of The Gordon Parks Arts and Social Justice Fund dedicated to supporting these educational initiatives. He oversaw the creation of the Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize, [7] which serves as a publishing platform for artists whose practice reflects and extends Gordon Parks’ legacy. The recipient of the annual prize develops a book of new work published and distributed by Steidl, one of the leading art book publishers internationally. [5] The inaugural recipient of the prize 2020 was LaToya Ruby Frazier. [7] In 2022, Kunhardt oversaw Howard University's acquisition of 252 photographs by Gordon Parks, one of the most comprehensive collections for the study of Parks' life and work anywhere in the world. [8]
Kunhardt is also an Executive Producer of the 2021 HBO film A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks, which was an official selection of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. [9]
The Meserve/Kunhardt family, including Kunhardt Jr, has been the collector and custodian of photographs and memorabilia of Abraham Lincoln for five generations, [1] [2] the story of which was the subject of the documentary Living With Lincoln that premiered on HBO. [1]
Ralph Ellison was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.
Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African Americans—and in glamour photography. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s, for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the films Shaft, Shaft's Big Score and the semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.
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Dorothy Kunhardt was an American children's-book author, best known for the baby book Pat the Bunny. She was also a historian and writer about the life of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
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Bruce Landon Davidson is an American photographer. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1958. His photographs, notably those taken in Harlem, New York City, have been widely exhibited and published. He is known for photographing communities usually hostile to outsiders.
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Mitchell Epstein is an American photographer. His books include Vietnam: A Book of Changes (1997); Family Business (2003), which won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award; Recreation: American Photographs 1973–1988 (2005); Mitch Epstein: Work (2006); American Power (2009); Berlin (2011); New York Arbor (2013); Rocks and Clouds (2018); Sunshine Hotel (2019); In India (2021); and Property Rights (2021).
Jim Goldberg is an American artist and photographer, whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations.
Christopher David Killip was a Manx photographer who worked at Harvard University from 1991 to 2017, as a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies. Killip is known for his black and white images of people and places especially of Tyneside during the 1980s.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is awarded annually by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the Photographers' Gallery to a photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the photographic medium in Europe during the past year.
Dyllan McGee is a documentary filmmaker and founder of McGee Media. In partnership with Peter Kunhardt, McGee produced "Gloria: In Her Own Words” (HBO), “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” (PBS), "MAKERS: Women Who Make America” and many more. McGee is the Founder and Executive Producer of AOL's MAKERS.
John P. Jacob is an American curator. He grew up in Italy and Venezuela, graduated from the Collegiate School (1975) in New York City, and studied at the University of Chicago before earning a BA in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic (1981) and an MA in art history from Indiana University (1994).
LaToya Ruby Frazier is an American artist and professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Alice Attie is an American visual artist and published poet from New York City.
Deana Lawson (1979) is an American artist, educator, and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is primarily concerned with intimacy, family, spirituality, sexuality, and Black aesthetics.
Ron A. Jude is an American photographer and educator, living in Eugene, Oregon. His photography, which "often explores the relationship between people, place, nature and memory", has been published in a number of books. Jude works as a professor of art at the University of Oregon.
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks is a 2021 documentary film that follows the life of the photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks. Its title derives from Parks’ 1967 autobiography. The film features Devin Allen, Jelani Cobb, Anderson Cooper, Ava DuVernay, Nelson George, Jamel Shabazz, Spike Lee, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
