Every old family portrait was once a picture of someone living an ordinary life. Bringing his new book, The Ones Who Came Before, into conversation with Shizu Saldamando’s Sandra and Tammy, Hollywood Forever (on view at SVAC courtesy of Art Bridges Foundation) and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Kevin Maillard explores how portraits let us see the people who came before us with a future they could never have imagined. They were once just like us—and someday, we may be just like them.

Support provided by Art Bridges

Kevin Maillard is Professor of Law at Syracuse University, a regular contributor to the New York Times and an author of children’s literature. He has written for The Atlantic and has provided on-air commentary to ABC News and MSNBC. He is the author of Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, a picture book illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, which won the Sibert Medal and the American Indian Youth Literature Honor, and the forthcoming And They Walked On (2025) and The Ones Who Came Before (2026). He serves on the boards of the Impact and Legacy Fund and the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers at Phillips Academy. A fifth-generation enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, he is based in Manhattan, NY.

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