The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats at The Jewish Museum

We always like to know more about the exhibitions we frame. I was not familiar with Ezra Jack Keats's work before we started working with the Jewish Museum on this exhibition. I think you will agree his work is wonderful and it is an exhibition the whole family will enjoy. He has also been honored for his contribution in the civil rights movement. Another example of an artist changing the way we perceive the world.

The following is the Jewish Museum's description of the show. This is the first major United States exhibition to pay tribute to award-winning author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983), whose beloved children’s books include Whistle for Willie (1964), Peter’s Chair (1967), and The Snowy Day (1962), opens at The Jewish Museum on September 9, 2011 and remains on view through January 29, 2012. Published at the height of the American civil-rights movement and winner of the prestigious Caldecott Medal, The Snowy Day became a milestone, featuring the first African-American protagonist in a full-color picture book.  The Snowy Day went on to inspire generations of readers, and paved the way for multiracial representation in American children’s literature.  Also pioneering were the dilapidated urban settings of Keats’s stories.  Picture books had rarely featured such gritty landscapes before.