Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr.

Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. has served as executive director of The Gordon Parks Foundation since 2011, following five years on the organization’s leadership team. He oversees the Foundation’s exhibitions, publications, research projects, and programs with institutions internationally and in New York, as well as the artist’s archive.

Under his leadership, the Foundation created the Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarships and Prizes, which has conferred over $2 million in scholarships and prizes for students at ten educational institutions. During his tenure, the Foundation also established the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship Program. In 2019, he oversaw the Gordon Parks Arts and Social Justice Fund, dedicated to supporting educational initiatives, and the creation of the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize.

Kunhardt is series editor of Steidl/Gordon Parks Foundation publications; he co-edited the multivolume Gordon Parks: Collected Works (Steidl, 2012), which features five decades of Parks’s photography. He has also been involved in the creation of several Parks exhibitions and catalogues.

Since 2011, Kunhardt has been Executive Director of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation, where he oversaw the preservation of the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of 19th century photography, now residing at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He is also responsible for the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation’s acquisition of the archive of LIFE photographer Ed Clark and children’s book author Dorothy Kunhardt.