Jacob Lawrence
Based on diligent research and inspired by Harlem Renaissance artists Augusta Savage and Charles Alston, Jacob Lawrence illustrated African American history through colorful narrative paintings. His subjects included series on prominent figures in the struggle for black liberation, such as Harriet Tubman; his “The Great Migration” (1940-41) chronicled the Depression-era flight of African Americans from the impoverished rural south to northern cities.
Comprising 60 tempera works executed simultaneously with unifying color schemes and visual motifs, it depicted heart-wrenching everyday scenes. New York Times critic Holland Cotter once described Lawrence’s oeuvre as having a “sinewy moral texture…that is in the business of neither easy uplift nor single-minded protest.”
More about Jacob Lawrence adopted his characteristic simple forms and abstract elements from African art, linking that aesthetic tradition to present-day black identity.
American, 1917–2000, Atlantic City, New Jersey
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Summer In The City
May 11 - Jul 26, 2024Summer in the City is a multimedia exhibition featuring works spanning over a century by an intergenerational collection of artists who have depicted New York City over the years.Read more
From Saul Chase’s serigraphs of subway architecture to Edmund Yaghjian’s lyrical oil paintings of city views, the group exhibition captures the wide range of daily urban rhythms and architectural landmarks central to the New York City experience. The diverse range of artistic mediums and approaches presented in the show–etchings, paintings, serigraphs, pastel works, and more–demonstrates the rich artistic legacy of the urban center and its dynamic role in both shaping and being shaped by public imagination and popular culture over the decades. -
A Black Perspective
Jan 8 - Jul 30, 2021Read more -
On Such a Night as This: A Celebration of African American Art
Nov 10, 2016 - Jan 28, 2017Read more -
Social Art in America
Then and Now May 6 - Jun 27, 2014Read more
