The Snowy Day, 1962
The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats
April 10–September 7, 2014
ADMISSION
- Included with Museum admission:
- $10 General
- $7 Seniors and Full-Time Students
- $5 Children 2–12
- FREE to Members and Children under 2
- FREE to all on Thursdays
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Enter the evocative world of the groundbreaking children’s book author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats in this exhibition, featuring over eighty original works by the artist. Ranging from preliminary sketches and “dummies” or preparatory books to final paintings and collages, the works displayed in The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats explore a life and career that became an inspiration for generations of readers.
Keats’s landmark book The Snowy Day (1962) was the first modern, full-color book to feature an African American protagonist. Published during the height of the civil rights movement in America, the book propelled his career in children’s literature.
He went on to write and illustrate six more stories that featured an African American central character—leading many to assume that Keats himself was African American. In truth, he was born Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz to Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn. Jack lived in tenement housing as his impoverished family struggled to eke out a living during the Great Depression. From his beginnings as an artist, Keats identified with the downtrodden.
The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats exhibition features works on loan from the de Grummond Children’s Literary Collection of the University of Southern Mississippi, including examples of Keats’s most introspective but less-known output inspired by Asian art and poetry. The exhibition is an expression of the Skirball’s commitment to presenting the work of socially engaged artists and to exploring the cultural contributions of notable American Jews.
What's On
