Jacob Lawrence - exhibit of panel series of paintings to open September 23, 1993

Fifty-two years have passed since Jacob Lawrence's Migration of the Negro series was last circulated, and the 60-panel set of narrative paintings hasn't been shown together since 1972. Lawrence, who came to prominence as an African-American artist in the 1940s, is known for creating vibrant, thought-provoking works with universal themes.

Beginning September 23, the public will be able to see the most complex serial work of Lawrence's career, which he painted when he was only 23. "Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series" examines all aspects of Lawrence's narrative invention, which blends synthetic cubist form and the tempera medium with the tradition of the griot to illustrate the exodus of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South. With new panel captions and sequential grouping, the exhibition compares Lawrence's 1940s message and medium with today's interpretation of the series.

The 76-year-old artist, who was born in Atlantic City, N.J. (one stop during his parents' move north), sums up his message of 50 years ago in a few words: "I did the series not to sell it, but because I wanted to. My culture, as was that of my family and other families, was Southern; and I would hear people talk about the arrival of other families. So I was in the thick of this. I began to realize that I was a part of this [migration]."

Lawrence recalls that Edith Halpert, the owner and director of the Downtown Gallery, in New York City, put the work on exhibit in 1941. "That caught the attention of Fortune magazine, which reproduced 26 of the 60 panels," he says. "It was the first important set of events of my career, outside of the black community."

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series" opens at the Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C., and in 1994 will appear in Milwaukee, Berkeley, Calif., Birmingham, Ala., and St. Louis, before ending at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, in 1995.

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