The Massillon Museum hosted a free public screening on March 26 of “The Golden Key,” a 24-minute 1955 film by Massillon native Nell Dorr, at MassMu’s Gessner Hall. The screening, part of the Canton Palace Theatre’s America 250 film series, was followed by a panel discussion featuring Tasha Tudor scholar Jeanette Chandler Knazek, filmmaker diane estelle Vicari, Cuyahoga Community College film program head Olivia Villasenor and Women in Film and Television of Ohio founder Stacey Malone.

The film profiles children’s author and illustrator Tasha Tudor and her devotion to Victorian-era domestic life. Dorr, who died in 1988, was primarily known as a photographer whose soft-focus aesthetic and attention to domestic scenes earned recognition at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center for Photography in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her father owned a portrait studio in Massillon, where she learned photography from a young age. The Massillon Museum holds several Dorr prints in its permanent collection.

“Her legacy is really connected to the fact that she experimented a lot in the dark room and that she focused a lot of her artistic sensibilities in the process of photography,” said MassMu Executive Director Alexandra Nicholis Coon. Kayla DeVitto of the Canton Palace Theatre, who organized the event, noted that women filmmakers behind the camera were rare in the 1950s and said she aimed to place Dorr’s work in the context of Women’s History Month and current conversations about beauty and creative expression.

The Canton Palace Theatre is currently closed for renovations through September; the Massillon Museum served as the venue for this event. The Massillon Museum is located at 121 Lincoln Way E. in Massillon.

Source: Ideastream Public Media