This publication sets the precedent for the next generation of Lawrence scholars and studies in modern and contemporary discourse. The American Struggle explores Jacob Lawrence’s radical way of transforming history into art by looking at his thirty panel series of paintings, Struggle . . . from the History of the American People (1954–56). Essays by Steven Locke, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Austen Barron Bailly, and Lydia Gordon mark the historic reunion of this series—seen together in this exhibition for the first time since 1958. In entries on the panels, a multitude of voices responds to the episodes representing struggle from American history that Lawrence chose to activate in his series. The American Struggle reexamines Lawrence’s lost narrative and its power for twenty-first century audiences by including contemporary art and artists. Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas invite us to reconsider history through themes of struggle in ways that resonate with Lawrence’s artistic invention. Statements by these artists amplify how they and Lawrence view history not as distant period of the past but as an active imaginative space that is continuously questioned in the present tense and for future audiences.
Elizabeth Hutton Turner is University Professor in the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Austen Barron Bailly is the George Putnam Curator of American Art at the Peabody Essex Museum. Lydia Gordon is Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Research at the Peabody Essex Museum. Steven Locke is an artist and professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He is the City of Boston artist-in-residence and project creator of Love Letter to a Library for the Boston Public Library.
The publication accompanies the nationally touring exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle on view at the Peabody Essex Museum from January 18 to April 26, 2020, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from June 2 to September 7, 2020, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, from October 17, 2020, to January 10, 2021, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, from February 25 to May 31, 2021, and the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, from June 26 to September 19, 2021.
With contributions by Derrick Adams, Sandy Alexandre, Rachel Allen, Austen Barron Bailly, Lonnie G. Bunch III, Elgin Cleckley, Bethany Collins, Spencer Crew, Philip J. Deloria, Andrea Douglas, David C. Driskell, Walter O. Evans, Kimberli Gant, Elyse Gerstenecker, Erin C. Golightly, Lydia Gordon, Kerri Greenidge, Randall Griffey, Leslie King Hammond, Patricia Hills, Kevin Jennings, Erich Kessel, Steve Locke, Deborah McDowell, Masud Olufani, Harvey Ross, Jacquelyn Days Serwer, Elsa Smithgall, Barbara Earl Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Salamishah Tillet, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Monique Verdin, Chloe Downe Wells, Tamir Williams, and Sylvia Yount.
