Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration now in affordable $35 paperback edition
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Lawrence was 23 when he completed the 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled Migration of the Negro- when hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved from the rural South to the North after World War 1.
Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, NJ raised in New York City and part of the group of artists & writers associated with the " Harlem Renaissance" including Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.
Originally published in 2015 in $50 hardcover to accompany exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which traveled to Phillips Collection in Washington DC. Book also includes original poetry responding to the series -- edited by Elizabeth Alexander , who read poem at Obama's inauguration, she was at Yale, now at Columbia University.
Other poets include Rita Dove (Poet Laureate) , Nikky Finney, Tyehimba Jess(/College of Staten Island, CUNY), Yusef Komunyaka(New York University) Natasha Trethewey (Emory University, GA).
WEST COAST INTEREST: Jacob Lawrence moved to Seattle in the 1970s where he taught at the University of Washington
Edited by Leah Dickerman, Elsa Smithgall. Text by Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams, Kevin Young.
Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration in context
In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, made a series of 60 small tempera paintings on the Great Migration, the decades-long mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915–16. The child of migrant parents, Lawrence worked partly from his own experience and partly from long research in his neighborhood library. The result was an epic narrative of the collective history of his people. Moving from scenes of terror and violence to images of great intimacy, and drawing on film, photography, political cartoons and other sources in popular culture, Lawrence created an innovative format of sequential panels, each image accompanied by a descriptive caption. Within months of its completion, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), Washington, DC, each institution acquiring 30 panels.
The Migration Series is now a landmark in the history of modern art. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, now in paperback, grounds Lawrence’s work in the cultural and political debates that shaped his art and demonstrates its relevance for artists and writers today. The series is reproduced in full; short texts accompanying each panel relate them to the history of the Migration and explore Lawrence’s technique and approach. Alongside scholarly essays, the book also includes 11 newly commissioned poems, by Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams and Kevin Young, that respond directly to the series. The distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander edited and introduces the section.
Leah Dickerman is Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Elsa Smithgall is Curator at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Jodi Roberts is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Elizabeth Alexander is Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her most recent book of poetry is Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (Graywolf Press, 2010).
Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987) and a former United States Poet Laureate (1993–95). Her most recent book of poetry is Sonata Mulattica (W. W. Norton, 2009).
Nikky Finney is John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters, the University of South Carolina. She is a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for her book Head Off & Split (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011).Terrance Hayes is Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a MacArthur Fellow (2014) and a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for his book Lighthead (Penguin, 2010).Tyehimba Jess is Assistant Professor of English at the College of Staten Island in City University of New York. He is a winner of the National Poetry Series for his book leadbelly (Wave Books, 2005).
Yusef Komunyakaa is Global Distinguished Professor of English at New York University. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1994). His most recent book of poetry is The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet based in New York. Her most recent book of poetry is Living in the Love Economy(Overpass Books, 2014).
Natasha Trethewey is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emory University. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2007) and a former United States Poet Laureate (2012–14). Her most recent book of poetry is Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Cornell University. Her most recent book of poetry is Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
Crystal Williams is Associate Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of English at Bates College. Her most recent book of poetry is Detroit as Barn (Lost Horse Press, 2014).
Kevin Young is Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Previously, he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and Curator of Literary Collections and Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University. His most recent book of poetry is Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014).
Featured image is panel 45 of the Migration Series. Captioned, "They arrived in Pittsburgh, one of the great industrial centers of the North, in large numbers." (1941), it is reproduced from 'Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times Sunday Book Review
Isabel Wilkerson
Lushly illustrated and deeply archival in approach…. fluidly written
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Featured here is panel 58 of Jacob Lawrence's 1940–41 multi-panel masterwork, The Migration Series, Back in Stock from MoMA at a time when our country is addressing issues of civil rights, antiracism and migration with fresh energy. This particular panel is captioned: "In the North the Negro had better educational facilities." Elsewhere in the book Lawrence is quoted, looking back on the darkest days of slavery from the vantage of 1940: "We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than people today, could conquer their slavery, we certainly can do the same… I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about." continue to blog
Featured image is panel 15 of The Migration Series, Jacob Lawrence's 1940-41 masterwork comprised of 60 small tempera paintings captioned sequentially to tell the story of the Great Migration - the early twentieth-century mass movement of southern blacks to the north and west - in Lawrence's own words; in this case, "Another cause was lynching. It was found that where there had been a lynching, the people who were reluctant to leave at first left immediately after this." The perfect companion to the show now on view at Seattle Art Museum, this volume reunites two long-separated halves of the landmark series, which belong to the permanent collections of both MoMA and the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. continue to blog
Jacob Lawrence's 60-panel masterpiece, the Migration Series was completed in 1941, when he was just 23 years old. Panel 14, pictured here, is captioned: "Among the social conditions that existed which was partly the cause of the migration was the injustice done to the Negroes in the courts." As relevant today as it was more than half a century ago, this seminal document of racial injustice should be required reading for every American. Writing for the New York Times Book Review in 2015, Isabel Wilkerson marvels at Lawrence's ability to "so thoroughly inhabit something so large at so young an age and, through lived experience and focused devotion, become not only an artist but a documentarian, a sociologist and a historian, able to see past the midpoint of the movement into the present day. His final panel accurately predicted that the migration would continue. And his first panel, a depiction of migrants rushing toward trains destined for 'Chicago,' 'New York' and 'St. Louis,' seems prophetic in the age of Ferguson." In 2017, as we face a new composition on the Supreme Court, this image is more haunting than ever. continue to blog
In honor of Black History Month—which carries the highly-relevant additional hashtag of #GreatMigration this year—we are featuring MoMA’s classic study of Jacob Lawrence’s iconic Migration Series. Replete with 77 color reproductions, 25 black-and-white documentary images, a complete deconstruction of each panel, critical commentary from MoMA curator Jodi Roberts and a collection of response poems from writers such as Rita Dove and Crystal Williams, this essential paperback delves into the cultural and political context of both the Great Migration itself (beginning 1915) and America of the 1940s, when Lawrence produced the work, in line with today’s related issues around racial boundaries and institutional oppression. Panel 3 in the series, featured here, carries the 1941 caption, “In every town Negroes were leaving by the hundreds to go North and enter into Northern industry.” Though the migrants carry heavy loads of personal belongings and struggle under the weight of obvious physical and emotional burdens, they are accompanied by a flock of birds soaring alongside them, reminding the viewer of the importance, and possibility, of social change—then and now. continue to blog
In a 2015 New Yorker review of Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, Peter Schjeldahl wrote, "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." We are delighted to report that a new paperback edition of MoMA's landmark publication is now available. Featured here, Panel 33 is captioned: "People who had not yet come North received letters from their relatives telling them of the better conditions that existed in the North." continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.5 x 12 in. / 192 pgs / 77 color / 25 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $59.95 ISBN: 9781633450400 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 2/28/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited by Leah Dickerman, Elsa Smithgall. Text by Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams, Kevin Young.
Lawrence's landmark series on African American migration in context
In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, made a series of 60 small tempera paintings on the Great Migration, the decades-long mass movement of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North that began in 1915–16. The child of migrant parents, Lawrence worked partly from his own experience and partly from long research in his neighborhood library. The result was an epic narrative of the collective history of his people. Moving from scenes of terror and violence to images of great intimacy, and drawing on film, photography, political cartoons and other sources in popular culture, Lawrence created an innovative format of sequential panels, each image accompanied by a descriptive caption. Within months of its completion, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), Washington, DC, each institution acquiring 30 panels.
The Migration Series is now a landmark in the history of modern art. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, now in paperback, grounds Lawrence’s work in the cultural and political debates that shaped his art and demonstrates its relevance for artists and writers today. The series is reproduced in full; short texts accompanying each panel relate them to the history of the Migration and explore Lawrence’s technique and approach. Alongside scholarly essays, the book also includes 11 newly commissioned poems, by Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Spears Jones, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams and Kevin Young, that respond directly to the series. The distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander edited and introduces the section.
Leah Dickerman is Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Elsa Smithgall is Curator at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Jodi Roberts is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Elizabeth Alexander is Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. Her most recent book of poetry is Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (Graywolf Press, 2010).
Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987) and a former United States Poet Laureate (1993–95). Her most recent book of poetry is Sonata Mulattica (W. W. Norton, 2009).
Nikky Finney is John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters, the University of South Carolina. She is a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for her book Head Off & Split (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011).Terrance Hayes is Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a MacArthur Fellow (2014) and a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for his book Lighthead (Penguin, 2010).Tyehimba Jess is Assistant Professor of English at the College of Staten Island in City University of New York. He is a winner of the National Poetry Series for his book leadbelly (Wave Books, 2005).
Yusef Komunyakaa is Global Distinguished Professor of English at New York University. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1994). His most recent book of poetry is The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012).
Patricia Spears Jones is a poet based in New York. Her most recent book of poetry is Living in the Love Economy(Overpass Books, 2014).
Natasha Trethewey is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emory University. She is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2007) and a former United States Poet Laureate (2012–14). Her most recent book of poetry is Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Cornell University. Her most recent book of poetry is Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).
Crystal Williams is Associate Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of English at Bates College. Her most recent book of poetry is Detroit as Barn (Lost Horse Press, 2014).
Kevin Young is Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Previously, he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and Curator of Literary Collections and Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University. His most recent book of poetry is Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014).
