"Don’t get up. Just sit a while and think. Never be afraid to sit a while and think." — Lorraine Hansberry

‍

Lorraine Hansberry was a playwright, journalist, and activist. Her play A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a Black woman produced on Broadway and has been revived on Broadway in 2004 and 2014. Generations of Black theater, television and film artists were inspired by and cut their artistic teeth on her masterpiece.

In 2022, the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative launched a national tour of a sculpture of Hansberry’s likeness by Los Angeles-based artist, Alison Saar, and a unique scholarship to cover not only the tuition but the living expenses of women and non-binary BIPOC dramatic writers in graduate school.

Alison Saar’s work, To Sit A While, features the figure of Hansberry surrounded by five bronze chairs, each representing a different aspect of her life and work. The life-size chairs are an invitation to the public to do just that: to sit with her and think.

‍

The sculpture of Hansberry will be on view at MoAD April 5-May 1, 2023. To learn more about the sculpture and the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, visit https://lorrainehansberryinitiative.org/.