Two Artists Revive The Ghosts Of The Civil Rights Movement Through The Power Of Cinema

If you’re too young to have lived through the civil rights movement, it’s likely your memory of it has been shaped by family stories, PBS documentaries, and, most of all, black-and-white news photos. So you may be forgiven for thinking the movement was all marches and speeches and angry mobs and acts of violence.

“There’s a sensation of standing in the moment, like we’re in the photo, or about to take a photo ourselves,” MCA curator Naomi Beckwith explains. “You see some movement—wind blowing a curtain, or someone blinking—but the movement is very quiet and incidental. . . . It looks like a memory. The actors look like ghosts.”

Sat 5/17 through 8/31: Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM Museum of Contemporary Art 220 E. Chicago 312-280-2660 mcachicago.org $12