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January 20, 2017

After Hours: Jacob Lawrence series is at SAM

“The Migration Series” is 60 paintings that depict the exodus of African Americans from the south between World War I and World War II.

SEATTLE — Jacob Lawrence's masterwork “The Migration Series” is at Seattle Art Museum through April 23, the first time in more than 20 years that all 60 pieces will be shown together on the West Coast.

The pieces depict the exodus of African Americans from the rural south between World War I and World War II, and are on loan from The Museum of Modern of Art in New York and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Lawrence completed the work in 1941 when he was 23 years old and living in Harlem. He conceived of it as a single work of art, like a large mural painting. Lawrence and his wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, moved to Seattle in 1971 and he taught at the University of Washington until he retired in 1986.

SAM curator Patricia Junker called the series “a revelatory monument of early modern American art.” She said, “The themes of social justice it explores are timeless.”

Lawrence was born in 1917, and was one of the first African American artists to be represented by a major gallery and receive mainstream recognition in the United States.



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