History Is Lunch: Stephen Parks and Noah Saterstrom, “What Became of Dr. Smith? A Life Rediscovered"

On July 31, 2024, Stephen Parks and Noah Saterstrom presented “What Became of Dr. Smith? A Life Rediscovered” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
The artist Noah Saterstrom grew up in Natchez. His great grandfather was a traveling optometrist who, according to family lore, disappeared in 1924 but was never discussed beyond that.
State law librarian Stephen Parks met Saterstrom in 2018, and the two discussed ways to address questions surrounding the disappearance of Saterstrom’s great grandfather, Dr. David L. Smith.
“When I began my search, I thought I might find a mention or two of Dr. Smith in some old newspapers,” Parks said. “But I was quickly led to courthouse files in Mississippi and Louisiana and archival records of medical institutions.”
Through a years-long search in public and private archives, Saterstrom learned that Dr. Smith spent the final four decades of his life first in Jackson at the Mississippi State Insane Hospital and later at the Mississippi State Hospital in nearby Whitfield.
As the research project went on, Saterstrom began incorporating the unearthed information into paintings about his great grandfather. Those pieces became part of a series of 183 canvases that together span 122 feet and are now on display at the Mississippi Museum of Art in the exhibit What Became of Dr. Smith.
“The painting goes from my great grandfather’s birth to his death and is a sort of visual culmination of the story that emerged a century after it was erased from the family’s record,” said Saterstrom. “It’s been fascinating to see the work of the Asylum Hill Project at the very site where Dr. Smith was institutionalized.”
Stephen Parks is the state librarian of Mississippi and oversees the State Law Library. He earned his JD at Mississippi College School of Law and his MLIS at the University of Southern Mississippi. As an adjunct with USM’s Library and Information Science Department, Parks teaches courses on locating government resources and publications.
Nashville resident Noah Saterstrom was raised in Mississippi and educated at Scotland’s Glasgow School of Art. He has held residencies at HRH Prince Charles’s Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland; Morris and Spottiswood in Glasgow, Scotland; the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia; and Exploded View Microcinema in Tucson, Arizona. Saterstrom’s work Road to Shubuta was included in the Mississippi Museum of Art’s 2018 exhibition Picturing Mississippi and later acquired by the museum.
History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hourlong programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on RUclips and Facebook.