Duncan, Patricia D. (Patricia DuBose), 1932-

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1932-08-16

Language: English,

Biographical notes:

Patricia D. Duncan (b. 1932), photojournalist and contributing photographer to the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica project in the early 1970s.

From the description of Duncan, Patricia D., 1932- (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). naId: 10614764

Patricia DuBose Duncan was born August 16, 1932 at Nashville, Tennessee to Robert and Edith DuBose. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri in 1954, and in that same year married Herbert Ewing Duncan, Jr. They lived in Japan from 1956 to 1957, where Duncan studied wood block printmaking and held her first one-person exhibition. Their sons David and Donald were born in the 1950s.

From 1968-1971, Duncan studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she later taught. In the early 1970s, inspired by environmentalist and University of Kansas Professor E. Raymond Hall, Duncan joined a citizens' movement to preserve the nation's tallgrass prairies and to establish a Tallgrass Prairie National Park in the Kansas Flint Hills. She became a founder and leader of various environmental bodies which championed this cause, including Save the Tallgrass Prairie, Inc. and the Grassland Heritage Foundation.

Throughout the 1970s, Duncan dedicated her artistry to tallgrass prairie preservation, capturing the beauty and ecology of the prairie in thousands of photographs which reached a wide audience through Duncan's many exhibitions, photomurals, publications, and multi-media presentations. For the nation's Bicentennial events of 1976, Duncan produced a major exhibition, "The Tallgrass Prairie: An American Landscape," which traveled the nation for many years under sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (S.I.T.E.S.). The exhibition's premier opening in Kansas City also featured Duncan's multi-media presentation titled "Tallgrass: The Inland Sea."

Duncan's book of prairie photographs, Tallgrass Prairie: The Inland Sea, was published in 1978. As a consultant to Life magazine in 1979, she accompanied artist Gordon Parks during his return to Kansas and his photography of the Flint Hills. Duncan is a trustee emeritus of the Nature Conservancy, and has earned many honors for her artistry and for her leadership in championing protection of the nation's tallgrass prairies.

From the guide to the Patricia DuBose Duncan papers, circa 1900-2003, (University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library Kansas Collection)