Pulitzer Prize exhibition opens at Chicago's Harold Washington Library
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Sergey Ponomarev's 2016 Breaking News Photography Pulitzer winner for The New York Times. Photo: Courtesy of The New York Times via The Pulitzer Prizes
A new exhibition at Chicago's Harold Washington Library explores pivotal moments in history through Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, photography and art.
Why it matters: The exhibition reveals how journalists and artists have held power accountable, exposed truths and documented history.
Driving the news: The Pulitzer Prizes and the American Library Association (ALA) opened "Pulitzer on the Road: Prize-Winning Works That Inform, Empower and Inspire" at Harold Washington Library on Oct. 14.
Zoom in: The display includes about 220 items on the library's fifth floor — the periodicals floor. The show breaks down into five themed sections:
- Seeing America features U.S. Pulitzer winners, including the photograph of Coretta Scott King at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. and two students crying after the deadly shooting at Columbine.
- Bearing Witness in the World shows how journalists spotlight international conflict and events to the rest of the world.
- Telling Stories highlights winners beyond journalism, such as Kendrick Lamar, the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer.
- Making a Difference digs into the ways journalism, especially local news, has adapted its practices and exposed injustice, such as the Chicago Tribune's 1988 winning series about corruption, "City Council: The Spoils of Power."
- Who Tells These Stories asks visitors to share what stories they would tell.
Between the lines: Some of the displays expose how America's democracy continues to be challenged. Multiple winning books included in the exhibition have been banned.
What they're saying: "The underlying theme there for me is that this is a celebration of reading, of freedom, of knowledge, and of our democracy, which depends on not only libraries but writers and authors, journalists, photographers, playwrights, everything, poets, everything the Pulitzers support and honor," ALA's executive director Dan Montgomery said during a press preview of the show.
Zoom out: The exhibition travels to 19 other cities after Chicago, including Dallas, Columbus, St. Louis, Buffalo, Cheyenne and Ponce, Puerto Rico.
If you go: "Pulitzer on the Road: Prize-Winning Works That Inform, Empower and Inspire" is on display at Harold Washington Library through December.
🗯️ My thought bubble: Some of the images, like U.S. soldiers at Iwo Jima, "Napalm Girl" in Vietnam and Babe Ruth greeting adoring fans at Yankee Stadium, are so embedded in our culture that we forget — or never knew — the stories behind them.
- The exhibition offers an opportunity to explore the "how" behind the photos.