Events › Community Portrait Workshop: The Legacy of Margaret Burrough and Making Art Accessible

Dr. Margaret Burroughs’ Chicago is widely regarded for her work as a writer, an artist, and for having helped establish two key Chicago cultural institutions: the South Side Community Arts Center and the DuSable Museum. These venues gave African-American artists spaces to both fashion and display their culture and history inside their community. In this program, patrons will uniquely interact with Dr. Margaret Burroughs’ legacy drawing from oral histories from her students, mentees, family and friends, supported with CPL’s archival materials, to reveal largely unknown details about her life’s work, presented by Chicago artist and family member Sulyiman Stokes.

Stokes, a photographer and DJ, will demonstrate how his creative practice relates to Burroughs’ and carries Chicago’s tradition of cultural workers forward. He will display his work and discuss what it means to be a cultural worker committed to the archival preservation of Black life through various mediums.Keeping in lockstep with Dr. Burroughs’ legacy of making art ownership accessible, Stokes will give away to attendees some of his works to either start their own art collection or add to an existing one. Optionally, he will take individual community portraits at every session, which is his unique way of fostering community and furthering art accessibility.

"Margaret Burroughs" ca 1948. William McBride papers, Box 38, Photo 105, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, Chicago Public Library, Photograph by Gordon Parks.

Learn more in our archives!

Presented as part of the Renaissance Project, this event invites participants to actively engage with the rich and often untold stories of Black history and heritage at Chicago Public Library.

This program is made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Chicago Public Library Foundation.

Accessibility
Need sign language interpretation or other accessibility assistance for this event? Please call (312) 747-8184 or email access@chipublib.org to request accommodations. Requests must be made at least 14 business days before the event.