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Lillian E. Smith: 80th Anniversary Exhibition
This year marked some major anniversaries from Lillian Smith: the 80th anniversary of her first novel Strange Fruit, the 75th of her memoir Killers of the Dream, and the 70th of her memoir The Journey. Over the course of the year we have done numerous things to celebrate these anniversaries, including events such as “Celebrating Lillian E. Smith” in the spring and articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Augusta Magazine, among other things. However, even with all of the things we have done this year, the most meaningful event for me has to be the Lillian E. Smith: 80th Anniversary Exhibition I co-curated with our museum director, Rebecca Brantley. This exhibition has been something we’ve talked about doing for a few years, and this year we finally did it.
As we conceived of the exhibition, we thought about various aspects of Smith’s life and work that could serve as the focal point. Our first idea, and one which we maintained in the exhibit, centered around Smith as collector. We know Smith as an activist, as a writer, as an artist. However, we do not see much about Smith as a collector and appreciator of art in her own right. When Dick McCutchen asked Smith, during a 1962 interview, if she found it hard, due to her fame, to conduct conversations with individuals. To his inquiry, Smith replied,
This is too hard. You go anywhere…
