Jacob Lawrence's Fames Migration Series to Reunite at The Phillips Collection

Community Events, Online Resources, and Special Programs Planned for Fall to Commemorate Lawrence’s Legacy and to Facilitate Migration Dialogue

WASHINGTON—This fall, all 60 panels of the masterwork The Migration Series by renowned African American 20thcentury artist Jacob Lawrence will be on display at The Phillips Collection in People on the Move: Beauty and Struggle in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series. A powerful visual epic, The Migration Series (1940–41) documents the historic movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North more than a century ago. Reuniting 30 panels owned by the Phillips with 30 panels on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, Lawrence’s complete series will be on display beginning October 8, 2016, and will run until January 8, 2017. This exhibition builds on the museum’s rich and meaningful history with the artist over the course of decades in exhibitions and internationally recognized educational initiatives.

“Since the time Duncan Phillips first acquired the odd-numbered panels of Lawrence’s series in 1942, The Migration Series has remained a cornerstone of our permanent collection and a force in our educational work with international communities,” said Director Dorothy Kosinski. “While Jacob Lawrence’s masterpiece was created more than 70 years ago, it continues to resound powerfully with the global plight of migrants today. I look forward to the Phillips continuing its leadership role in using The Migration Series to stimulate dialogue and reflection on global challenges in the 21st century.” “In panel 60 of The Migration Series, Lawrence leaves us with the message, ‘And the migrants kept coming,’” said curator Elsa Smithgall. “During a time when record numbers of migrants are uprooting themselves in search of a better life, Lawrence’s timeless tale and its universal themes of struggle and freedom continue to strike a chord not only in our American experience but also in the international experience of migration around the world.”



LAUNCH OF INTERACTIVE WEBSITE

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Phillips will launch a dynamic interactive website on October 2 that will engage audiences with the historic and contemporary implications of migration. Special features include never-before-published video interviews with Jacob Lawrence as well as multiple perspectives from artists and scholars across disciplines. The website invites users to add their voices to the dialogue by offering their own visions for a 61st panel in the series or creating poems using words from prominent Harlem Renaissance poets.

COMMUNITY EVENTS AND PROGRAMS

In addition to the reunion exhibition and launch of the much anticipated website, there will be several special events and programs throughout the fall inspired by Lawrence’s masterwork and to commemorate the artist’s legacy. The Phillips will also welcome and facilitate community participation through a variety of forums—including visual art, dance, theater, music, and discussion events. Some events are scheduled to take place in the weeks leading up to the exhibition opening. To explore contemporary artistic views on migration, the Phillips is collaborating with Busboys and Poets on a juried call for Panel 61 art submissions responding to the question, “What would the 61st panel of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series look like today?” Selected submissions from artists will be displayed this fall in all six Busboys and Poets locations in the DC area. For more information, visit www.busboysandpoets.com/art/migration61.

On September 16, the Phillips will partner with The Potter’s House for conversation about the themes that exist in The Migration Series and that remain relevant today. This event will also provide an opportunity to get a glimpse of the new website ahead of launch.

Ahead of the Lantern Walk to be presented this fall by the 11th Street Bridge Project and Washington Performing Arts, the Phillips recently worked with Step Afrika! Summer Camp students during a workshop for making lanterns inspired by Lawrence’s Migration Series. The event remembers the African American families who once built their homes by candlelight in the historic Barry Farm and Hillsdale neighborhoods east of Anacostia River. In the weeks leading up to the community event and in association with Washington Performing Arts and Ward 8 Arts & Culture Council, the Phillips will continue to engage with high school students from Wards 7 and 8 on painting projects inspired by Lawrence’s series and the history of southeast DC. The commemorative walk will take place on September 17 between The Yards Park and Anacostia Arts Center.

On September 18, Step Afrika! will perform excerpts from the dance company’s signature work The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence at the Phillips. For this performance, Step Afrika! blends body percussion, choreography, spoken word, projected images of Lawrence’s panels, and music. Before the preview performance, creative leaders from Step Afrika!, The Phillips Collection, and Washington Performing Arts will participate in a panel discussion.

While the exhibition is on view, plays commissioned by the Phillips and inspired by Lawrence’s Migration Series will be debuted and read on October 20. This will include five 10-minute plays written by five local playwrights: Norman Allen, Tearrance Chisholm, Annalisa Dias, Jacqueline E. Lawton, and Laura Shamas. The production team for each play includes Lawton as Artistic Director, Otis Cortez Ramsey-Zöe as Dramaturg, and Derek Goldman as Director. There will be an additional performance of the staged readings during the museum’s Phillips after 5 event on November 3.

On November 17, the Phillips will host a poetry reading in partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library. Poets Tyehimba Jess and Robin Coste Lewis will read poems directly inspired by and written in response to The Migration Series.

To further celebrate the significance of Lawrence’s artwork, the University of Maryland (UMD) will host at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center a special performance of Derek Bermel’s musical score Migration Series. The UMD School of Music concert will feature the Symphony Orchestra, Jazz Band, Chamber Singers, and Wind Orchestra on Friday, December 2.

ABOUT JACOB LAWRENCE

Jacob Armistead Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917. The son of southern migrants, he moved with his mother and sister to Harlem in 1930 at the age of 13. During his participation in community art workshops there, Lawrence quickly discovered his love for art through the encouragement of such teachers as painter Charles Alston. Throughout the 1930s, Lawrence’s art was inspired by the cultural visionaries of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1938, Lawrence had his first solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA and started working for the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1940, he received a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund to create a 60-panel epic, The Migration of the Negro (now known as The Migration Series). The following year, when the series was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery, the then 23-year-old artist catapulted to national acclaim.

In the following decades, Lawrence continued to create paintings drawn from the African American experience as well as historical and contemporary themes, such as war, religion, and civil rights. He taught with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1946 and later at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He moved to Seattle in 1971, teaching at the University of Washington until 1983. During his later years, Lawrence worked in a variety of media, including large scale murals, silkscreen prints, and book illustrations. Until his death in 2000, Lawrence honed a unique visual language of abstraction that remained steeped in the human condition.

HISTORY OF THE MIGRATION SERIES

The Migration Series portrays the mass exodus of more than a million African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North, following the outbreak of World War I. This Great Migration, fueled by wartime labor shortages in the North and oppressive conditions in the South, resulted in the largest population shift of African Americans since the time of slavery.

Using bold forms, colors, and gestures, Lawrence distilled the migration experience into a powerful expression of the human condition. From lynching in the South to the bombing of African American homes in the North, Lawrence’s panels delve deeply into the struggles of people in search of greater economic, social, and political freedom.

Lawrence approached the panels methodically as part of a series. He wrote captions, made preparatory drawings, and primed the hardboards with gesso before painting each one with a hand-mixed casein  tempera. To ensure a uniform appearance, he applied a given color onto each panel in succession, starting with the darkest hue of black and proceeding to the lighter values. Integrating text and image, Lawrence created his epic statement in poetic cadences of simple shapes and colors as well as recurring symbols of movement: the train, the station, and people traveling.

New York art dealer Edith Halpert arranged for The Migration Series to be published in Fortune (November 1941), exhibited at her Downtown Gallery (November 1941–January 1942), and jointly purchased in 1942 by The Phillips Collection (odd-numbered panels) and the Museum of Modern Art (even-numbered panels). At the young age of 24, Lawrence received national acclaim for a series he later deemed the “creative highlight” of his career.

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

In 1942, museum founder Duncan Phillips expressed great enthusiasm for Lawrence’s Migration Series upon seeing it at the Downtown Gallery. That year, Phillips gave Lawrence his first solo museum exhibition and soon after purchased the odd-numbered panels. The Phillips has remained deeply committed to sharing and expanding Lawrence’s legacy and achievements with broad and diverse audiences. Enriched by a close relationship with the artist during his lifetime, The Phillips Collection has for the last 25 years played a leadership role in the study, presentation, and teaching of Jacob Lawrence’s important contribution to the history of modern art:

• In the 1990s, the Phillips organized an eight-city national tour of the complete Migration Series. It also led a major study of Lawrence’s life through symposia, conferences, and interdisciplinary panels.
• In 2000, Lawrence personally selected the Phillips to organize his retrospective. The highly acclaimed exhibition premiered at the Phillips and traveled to five other major cities.
• In 2007–08, the Phillips launched a five-venue NEA American Masterpieces touring exhibition featuring selections from the series. The tour brought Lawrence’s masterpiece to underserved communities throughout the United States and was accompanied by a major educational outreach program.
• In 2013, the Phillips partnered with the U.S. Department of State to conduct a series of workshops in Pakistan focusing on art and social change. Using Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1940–41) as a catalyst for conversation about the power of storytelling through art, emerging artists, middle and high school students, art educators, and museum professionals worked together to create visual narratives about identity, personal struggle, and Pakistani history.
• In 2015, The Phillips Collection again partnered with the U.S. Department of State to facilitate workshops in Bosnia and Herzegovina using Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series as a springboard for documenting their own personal migration stories through art. Phillips educators spent two weeks working with emerging artists, students, orphans, educators, and museum professionals from across the country.

CATALOGUE

This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series, co-published by The Phillips Collection and the Museum of Modern Art. Featuring images of all 60 panels and short descriptive texts, the book explores the cultural and political settings from which Lawrence’s art was inspired. Phillips Curator Elsa Smithgall discusses the work’s early exhibition history and describes how it came to be acquired by two museums. MoMA curator Leah Dickerman discusses Lawrence’s ability to use art as a medium for social change. Introduced by poet Elizabeth Alexander, the catalogue also includes a section that features 11 poems written by 10 poets that were specially commissioned in response to Lawrence’s epic masterwork.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS

People on the Move is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

The exhibition is presented by Altria.

Generous support is provided by Elaine Reuben

Additional in-kind support is provided by Farr & Ball

WEBSITE SPONSORS

Jacob Lawrence interactive website is produced by The Phillips Collection.

Major support is provided by the Zickler Family Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.

Generous funding is provided by Bo and Kymber Menkiti of the Menkiti Group.

Generous funding is also provided by A. Fenner Milton.

Additional support is provided by Harvey Ross, Patricia Mathews, and a community of online supporters