The Delta Cultural Center will exhibit its latest traveling exhibit, Disfarmer Photographs: Heber Springs Circa 1945, beginning November 15. The traveling exhibition is on loan from the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock and will be displayed at the Delta Cultural Center Visitors Center, located at 141 Cherry Street in historic downtown Helena, through February 11, 2006.

Mike Disfarmer (1884 – 1959) was a talented and eccentric man who photographed everyday life in Heber Springs from its glory days as a spa in the 1910s and 1920s through the Depression and World War II years. After Disfarmer’s death in 1959, the studio he built was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Some of the glass plate negatives from the 1930s and 1940s were rediscovered and salvaged in the mid-1970s, just before the studio was demolished. Since then, his compelling portraits have formed the basis for two books and several regional and national exhibitions.

This is one of fifteen Traveling Exhibitions available through the Arts Center’s State Services Department. Designed to be both educational and aesthetically appealing, these exhibits are organized by the Arts Center’s curatorial staff from the permanent collection or from artist loan. All touring programs are supported, in part, by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

State Services season sponsors include Wal-Mart; the Horace C. Cabe Foundation; Stella Boyle Smith Trust; Bank of America; The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston; The Philip R. Jonsson Foundation; Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation; and the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas. For more information on the Arkansas Arts Center’s touring programs, call (501) 396-0350 or (800) 264-ARTS.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage--to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council and the Natural Heritage Commission. ###

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