Publications: Mimi Gross

From 1979–1981, over twenty-eight children and young adults were abducted and murdered in the city of Atlanta. Collectively known as the Atlanta child murders, the killings drew the attention of the nation and altered daily life in the de facto capital of the South. The city imposed curfews. Some parents withdrew their children from school and forbade them from playing outside. On June 21, 1981, Wayne Williams was arrested and ultimately convicted of two murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. This past March, the Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Bottoms, reopened the cases hoping to use modern technology to lead to further convictions. Williams maintains his innocence.

On Mother’s Day, May 10, 1981 approximately one month before Williams’s arrest, Mimi Gross, an artist and young single mother, had just moved into a new apartment in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood. She had read about the events in The New York Times and requested that a friend send her a copy of The Washington Post since they had published images of the children. Gross remembers drawing the portraits on the floor of her apartment over a period of a few days—maybe less. The portraits were never intended for public display; they were an essential visual and emotional response to events that overwhelmed Gross, an artist who draws constantly. Indeed, drawing is one of her primary tools for understanding the world and connecting to it.

About Mimi Gross

Mimi Gross’s work can be found in the collection of the Jewish Museum, New York; the New York Public Library; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is the recipient of awards and grants including from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for Visual Arts, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a “Bessie” for sets and costumes. In addition, Gross is the President of the Board of the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation. The Foundation, which houses her family’s vast collection of Modernist art and arts of Africa, is located in their former home on LaGuardia Place, and open to the public.

Mimi Gross, Lost Atlanta, 1981
Softcover, 8.5 x 14 inches / 64 pages / full color
Pub Date: 2019
Publisher: Institute 193 and Atlanta Contemporary
Design and production by Ethan Fedele
Cover: 130# Cougar Smooth Natural paper
Interior: 70# Cougar Smooth Natural paper
4 Color Digital Print
Perfect Bound
ISBN: 978-1-7328482-1-4