At the Crossroads with Benny Andrews, Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker

This exhibition by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library features three artists whose collections are housed at Emory – Benny Andrews, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Walker, all of whom grew up in middle Georgia. “Crossroads” focuses on O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” which Andrews later illustrated. Walker also responded to O’Connor’s work through an essay, “Beyond the Peacock,” and a short story, “Convergence.”     
   
Using rare archival photos, journals, letters, original manuscripts and artwork, and personal artifacts, "At the Crossroads” examines how Andrews, O’Connor and Walker overlap geographically as Georgia natives, chronologically during their lifetimes, and creatively through their work. It reflects on their divergent origins and paths, while acknowledging the accolades and controversies in their lives, and illustrates how these three artists in different ways continue to reflect their time and place.

Related Links

Read the Emory News story "Emory Libraries exhibition examines intersecting lives and work of Benny Andrews, Flannery O'Connor and Alice Walker"

Watch the video "At the Crossroads: A Conversation with the Curators"

Image credits, left to right: Benny Andrews, photo courtesy of SCAD and with permission of the Benny Andrews estate; Flannery O’Connor, photo courtesy of Ina Dillard Russell Library, Georgia College and State University; Alice Walker, photo by Rhoda Nathans, The New York Times.