This Year’s Most Ironic Art Exhibit

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”—truer (and more gender, class, and race specific) words were never written by a group of rich, white, male slave owners. The irony of each Independence Day often fades in the star-spangled spotlight of barbeques and fireworks. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent dismembering of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, however, that irony regained its biting edge. The confluence of the holiday and the court decision makes the timing of One Life: Martin Luther King Jr. at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, this year’s most ironic art exhibit. MLK spent his sole mortal life in the pursuit of equality everywhere in America, including at the polls, so honoring his life in images in the same town at the same time that the highest court dishonored his memory is too much irony to bear. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "This Year’s Most Ironic Art Exhibit."

[Image: Jack Lewis Hiller. Martin Luther King Jr. shortly after his release from Reidsville Penitentiary, Georgia, 1960. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Jack Lewis Hiller. ©1960 Jack L. Hiller.]

[Many thanks to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, for the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition, One Life: Martin Luther King Jr., which runs through June 1, 2014.]