Image: Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) is presenting If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground, which opened on 10 September 2026 and runs through 19 December 2026. Drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition brings together photographs by more than 110 artists.
The project began as a collaboration between the scholar Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., Emmett Till’s cousin, close friend and the last surviving witness to his kidnapping. Launched after what would have been Till’s 85th birthday, it asks what his life might have been had he safely taken the train home to Chicago, and invites visitors to reflect on the years he did not live. MoCP describes the exhibition as a creative monument to that unlived life.
Civic and cultural figures were invited to choose an image expressing their hopes for Till’s life. Participants include members of the Till family alongside Lonnie G. Bunch III, Ava DuVernay, Amy Sherald, Hank Willis Thomas, Wynton Marsalis, Deborah Willis and others. According to the museum, the contributors together trace the route of Till’s journey home from Mississippi to Chicago and the wider Great Migration.
The artists on view range from Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon and Sally Mann to An-My Lê, Carrie Mae Weems, Ralph Lemon and Stephen Marc. They also include Till’s cousin, the photographer Lance Omar Thurman, represented by his image of the remains of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi.
Lewis is guest curator, working with Reverend Parker, while MoCP chief curator and deputy director Karen Irvine is coordinating curator, assisted by Deanna Whitlow. Lewis founded Vision & Justice, a research and publishing initiative on visual culture, and teaches at Harvard University.
A companion book, If Emmett Till Lived: A Creative Monument, edited by Lewis and designed by Miko McGinty, gathers photographs from the show with essays by eight writers, including Bunch, Vinson Cunningham and Sherrilyn Ifill. It is published by MoCP with DelMonico Books and D.A.P.
