An unexpected turnaround trip due to a personal matter blessed me with the opportunity to pay my first visit to New York’s famed Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In the bustling museum, I felt a connection with the visual arts like never before thanks to their presentation of “One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.”
It was the first time in more than 20 years that the collection of 60 panels had been publicly presented in its entirety. The exhibit closed this past Monday, September 7. Half of the panels headed to the MoMA’s storage area, and the other 30 panels traveled back to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Seeing them together at MoMA was more than likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In 1940, Lawrence received a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation to create a series of images on the migration of African-Americans from the South. Soon after “The Migration Series” was completed in 1941, Lawrence becomes the first black artist to be represented by a New York Gallery when Edith Halpert featured the work. Less than a year later, “The Migration Series” became the first work by an African American purchased by MoMA.
For the 2015 exhibit, recreated the ambience of the original time period. This comprehensive multimedia presentation weaved together music, literature, poetry, history and technology, all framed around the 60 panels depicting the mass exodus of blacks from the South to the North.
Guests soaked in recordings of a live performance of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Marian Anderson’s historic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The work of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Richard Wright and Aaron Douglas provided background imagery and context.
The panels themselves were smaller than expected, but no less impactful.
Like much of Lawrence’s work, “The Migration Series” is celebrated more for its historic significance than its aesthetic. However, as a granddaughter of the Great Migration, seeing an artistic study guide for family stories passed down for generations share a space in an institution like MoMa was validating and affirming.
Lawrence was sharing my family history from the very first panel. He introduced the series with black figures flooding into three entryways, labeled “New York,” “Chicago” and “St. Louis.” I imagined my grandmother squeezing through entry number three – leaving the comfort and familiarity of her roots in Clow, Arkansas for the city life of St. Louis at the tender age of 16.
Like millions of others, her willingness to risk it all for the promise of the unknown meant that through my father, I would be forever spoiled by the trappings of city life – and he would be spared the harshness of the Jim Crow South.
Lawrence captured the struggles and triumphs of the migrants. Particularly compelling were the panels that showed desperate attempts by white Southerners who made their life unbearable to keep them from fleeing plantations. Scenarios included white police officers detaining passengers so they would miss their trains or buses and the arrests of white recruiters who came to lure black laborers. Then many established Northern blacks were less than welcoming when they arrived in the North.
As a body of work, “The Migration Series” serves as artistic Cliff Notes for the millions of African Americans who boldly fled towards the promise of a better life – and ultimately changed the landscape of America.
MoMA’s online companion for “One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration series is still available online. To view it, visit http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/.
