Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Description

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just twenty-three years old, completed a series of sixty small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration. Within months of its making, Lawrence's Migration series was divided between The Museum of Modern Art (even numbered panels) and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (odd numbered panels). The work has since become a landmark in the history of African-American art, a monument in the collections of both institutions, and a crucial example of the way in which history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era. In 2015 and 2016, marking the centenary of the Great Migration's start (1915-16), the panels will be reunited in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art and then The Phillips Collection. Published to accompany the exhibition, this publication both grounds Lawrence's Migration series in the cultural and political debates that shaped the young artist's work and highlights the series' continued resonance for artists and writers working today. An essay by Leah Dickerman situates the series in relation to heady contemporary discussions of the artist's role as a social agent; a growing imperative to write - and give image to - black history in the late 1930s and early 1940s; and an emergent sense of activist politics. Elsa Smithgall traces the exhibition history of the Migration panels from their display at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1941 to their acquisition by MoMA and the Phillips Collection a year later. Short commentaries on each panel explore Lawrence's career and painting technique and aspects of the social history of the Migration portrayed in his images. The catalogue also debuts ten poems newly commissioned from acclaimed poets written in response to the Migration series. Elizabeth Alexander (honoured as the poet at President Obama's first inauguration) introduces the poetry project with a discussion of the poetic quality of Lawrence's work, as well as the impact and legacy of the poets in his orbit including Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

Leah Dickerman has been Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art since 2008. Her scholarship on the historical avant-garde appears in a broad range of publications. She earned her doctorate in art history from Columbia University, and has held faculty teaching positions at Stanford University and the University of Delaware.

Two impressions stand out. One is the terrifying obstinacy of racial injustice on the eve of the Second World War. The other is the moral grit that was needed to overcome it. In context, Migration appears as a hinge of the national consciousness: inward to the untold history of African-Americans and outward to the enlightenment of the wide world. It would not have worked were it not superb art, but it is. Melding modernist form and topical content, the series is both decorative and illustrative, and equally efficient in those fundamental, often opposed functions of painting.--Peter Schjeldahl "The New Yorker" A fine new catalog.--Michael Upchurch "The Seattle Times" Essential American History, Masterfully Rendered.--Emily Pothast "The Stranger" In Harlem, Mr. Lawrence was a deep reader living among deep writers, like Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. He knew them, talked with them, listened. In a very smart move, MoMA has extended this tradition of disciplinary exchange by asking 10 contemporary African-American poets, under the direction of the writer Elizabeth Alexander, to respond to the 'Migration Series' with new work. The results are in the catalog.... Terrific.--Holland Cotter "The New York Times" Lawrence used a deceptively simple structure - 60 small tempera paintings, each with its own caption - to tackle difficult political subjects, from bias in the criminal justice system to race riots in St. Louis. Many of the panels feel particularly resonant today.--Julia Halperin "The Art Newspaper" Several of Lawrence's panels resonate eerily with current events, as tensions continue to build across the US over the killing of black men by police. In a caption that could easily have been written today, panel 22 reads: "Migrants left. They did not feel safe. It was not wise to be found on the streets late at night. They were arrested on the slightest provocation." The accompanying image depicts three men handcuffed together. Their vertical stances echo the barriers of the jail cell.--Joanna Robotham "The Art Newspaper" Since 1941, when the renowned African-American painter Jacob Lawrence unveiled The Migration of the Negro, the 60-panel masterpiece has been divvied up between New York City's Museum of Modern Art and the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., and has rarely been viewed in its entirety. For the first time in 20 years, the paintings-scenes from the decades-long exodus from the rural Jim Crow South to the industrial North-will be reunited at MOMA as the centerpiece of the can't-miss exhibition One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North.--The Editors "Details" So much, and yet so little, has changed since 1940, when Lawrence laid 60 panels on the floor of his studio and began to tell the story of African-Americans' northward journey. It's a tale of fitful improvement without joyous finales.--Ariella Budick "The Financial Times" Thus, for many readers, the most powerful pages will inevitably be the 60 panels themselves, the deceptively childlike distillation of history and of the hopes and dreams propelling the movement that produced him. This family of images are together again as Lawrence wished them to be, as enduring now as the day he set them on gesso.--Isabel Wilkerson "The New York Times Book Review" Dickerman describes the Migration Series, fittingly, as a mode of history painting. The current century's catalogue of continuing violence against African Americans telegraphs that the structural inequality Lawrence documents is not confined to the past and that the "whole of America" has yet to absorb the lessons he aimed to teach.--Anne Monahan "CAA Reviews"