Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Rita Dove (Text by (Art/Photo Books)) Terrance Hayes (Text by (Art/Photo Books))

& 12 more

Description

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.

Product Details

Price

$35.00 $32.55

Publisher

Museum of Modern Art

Publish Date

February 28, 2017

Pages

192

Dimensions

9.5 X 11.9 X 0.7 inches | 2.4 pounds

Language

English

Type

Paperback

EAN/UPC

9781633450400

BISAC Categories:

History - General

Individual Artists - Monographs

American - African American

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About the Author

Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, is the only poet honored with both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. A professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia, she lives in Charlottesville.

Terrance Hayes is the author of four collections including Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry; Hip Logic, which won the National Poetry Series; and Muscular Music, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He is a professor of creative writing at The University of Pittsburgh and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife, the poet Yona Harvey, and their family.

Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poems include Warhorses (FSG, 2008), Taboo (FSG, 2004), and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at New York University.

Natasha Trethewey is a former US poet laureate and the author of five collections of poetry, as well as a book of creative nonfiction. She is currently the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. In 2007 she won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection Native Guard.

Crystal Williams is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and author of Kin and Lunatic. Her poetry appears in magazines such as Luna, Fourth River, Callaloo, The Indiana Review, and in the anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation, Poetry Nation, Sweet Jesus, and Beyond the Frontier, among others. Her essays can be found in publications including Ms. Magazine. She has been a featured reader at venues across the country including: The National Arts Club, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Sarah Lawrence College.

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry and a Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies at Yale University. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2005, and in 2010 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry by the AnisfieldWolf Book Awards.

Nikky Finney is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She edited Black Poets Lean South and authored On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, The World Is Round, Head Off & Split (winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry), and Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry. Finney's work, including her now legendary National Book Award acceptance speech, is on display in the inaugural exhibition of the African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Patricia Jones wrote Sloe Eyed Sentinels and The Post. She holds an Associate's degree in business and worked twenty-four years in higher education administration. As a member of the Sheridan Range Writers and Wyoming Writers, Inc., she is passionate about her craft. She grew up in Fremont County in Wyoming.

Prolific audiobook narrator Mirron Willis has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and an Audie Award. An accomplished actor, he has appeared on stage, in films, and on television. His many theater credits include roles in Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Knock Me a Kiss, and A Raisin in the Sun.

Jacob Lawrence is a prominent American painter whose career spans six decades. He is known for several sequences of narrative paintings, including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Lawrence is the illustrator of Harriet in the Promised Land, a picture book. He is Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Washington, Seattle.