CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/18/2017

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

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."