Eudora Welty in New York

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Eudora Welty is acknowledged as one of the great authors of the twentieth century, and in more recent years her talent as a photographer has been recognized. The Museum is marking the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth (April 13, 1909) with a selection of her photographs in an exhibition entitled Eudora Welty in New York. The exhibition reprises a near complete re-creation of Welty's first solo exhibition held in 1936 at the Photographic Galleries of Lugene Opticians in New York City.

During the Great Depression, the people of America suffered severe hardships and deprivations. Yet the spirit of the times was genuinely heroic, and some of the artists, many working for the Federal Works Progress Administration and Farm Securities Administration, captured it with true grandeur. One of these was a young Southern writer, Eudora Welty.

Welty's photographs capture what she so eloquently reveals in her prose: the complexity and dignity of the human condition. Among the works are poignant images of her fellow Mississippians during the Great Depression. The photographs explore scenes from every day life that have changed or vanished forever.

Eudora Welty in New York is organized by the Museum of the City of New York and opens in Jackson on April 11. This exhibition is sponsored locally by the law firm of Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, P.A. The Mississippi Museum of Art and its programs are supported in part by the city of Jackson and the Jackson Convention & Visitors Bureau. Support is also provided in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency, and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. This exhibition is sponsored by Watkins, Ludlam, Winter, Stennis, P.A.