artist

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today $18.2 million in grants for 208 humanities projects, including a Media Projects Production grant to enable production of a documentary film and website on the life and art of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. 

In Lorraine Hansberry: A Museum Show and Opening the Archive, OutHistory offers several perspectives on the queer intersectionality of Lorraine Hansberry: “What I Love, What I Hate, What I Should Like,” “Opening the Restricted Box: Lorraine Hansberry’s Lesbian Writing,” and “Hansberry's Letters to The Ladder Quoted.”

A new exhibition, “Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to The Ladder” examines a lesser-known aspect of the life of the award-winning author of the landmark play A Raisin in the Sun, who died in 1965 at the age of thirty-four. The exhibition features documents and publications addressing Hansberry’s identification as a feminist and a lesbian, and will be on view in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art from November 22, 2013, through March 16, 2014.

Marilyn Stasio says, “The performance is a personal triumph for Washington, who refrains from star-strutting to fold himself into a tight-knit ensemble of committed stage thesps who treat this revival like a labor of love.”

Lindsay Champion shares background on Lorraine Hansberry and A Raisin in the Sun.