Join us for an in-person introduction by Philip Brookman, curator of the exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

A coming-of-age story by artist Gordon Parks, The Learning Tree was the first production by a major Hollywood studio (Warner Brothers) to be directed by an African American filmmaker.

Parks’s feature film debut is based on his 1963 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name about a teenager growing up in rural Kansas during the 1920s. Parks not only wrote the screenplay adaptation of his own novel and directed the film, but he also produced it and composed the musical score. The Learning Tree was included in the National Film Registry by the United States National Film Preservation Board in 1989. (1969, 35mm, 106 minutes)

Programmed in conjunction with the exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement: 1955-1985, open from September 21, 2025 to January 4, 2026.

Image caption: Still from Gordon Parks’s The Learning Tree, courtesy of Park Circus