School Library Journal Review
YA-Full-color, full-page reprints of the 60 dramatic paintings of Lawrence's ``Migration Series'' fill half the pages of this catalog for the traveling exhibition. The text includes essays by various historians who relate the series to the time period and supply critical material about the painter's work. Quotations from Lawrence himself are particularly meaningful. Excellent black-and-white reproductions illustrate the historical and cultural part of the book and include a portrait of the artist. Beautifully printed and illustrated, the book will be useful for art classes or YAs interested in black history.-Linda Sudduth, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
This volume unites all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence's monumental series, "The Migration of the Negro," in book form for the first time since its creation in 1940-41. This series of captioned paintings depicts the great migration of rural African Americans from the Deep South to the cities of the North during and after World War I. While the "Migration" is clearly a chronicle of a milestone in American history, for the then 23-year-old artist, its theme was far more personal. Lawrence described it as "a portrait of myself, a portrait of my family, a portrait of my peers." The striking color plates are accompanied by nine illustrated essays by historians such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Deborah Willis. Each writer discusses a different aspect of Lawrence's life and career and assesses the "Migration" series and its epic subject matter from various aesthetic as well as historic vantage points. This is a fine, well-documented presentation of one of the "most significant and powerful accomplishments" of one of America's most preeminent and elo~quently narrative visual artists. ~--Donna Seaman
Choice Review
After achieving distinction with three series of paintings on the lives of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman (1937-40), Harlem artist Jacob Lawrence turned to a subject that had fascinated him since youth, the peopling of northern cities by the great African American migration from the South. The result was a series of 60 tempera on masonite panels, painted in a style blending cubist modernism with echoes of African primitivism, rich in earth tones. The Migration of the Negro was featured in Fortune magazine in 1941, exhibited in Edith Halpert's New York Downtown Gallery, and sold in half shares for a paltry $2,000 to the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery. It is now reunited for an exhibit at the Phillips, which resulted in the publication of this excellent volume. Accompanied by several useful essays highlighting historical context, archival and intellectual inspirations, and artisitc technique, the 60 superbly reproduced color panels are a rich resource in cultural history as well as American art. All levels. R. A. Fischer; University of MinnesotaDSDuluth
