indyweek.com, September 10, 2008

JACOB LAWRENCE EXHIBITION AT GOLDEN BELT, DURHAM

By Zack Smith

Jacob Lawrence's 1941 "Migration Series," originally painted while the artist was still in his 20s, catapulted him to national attention as one of the most important African-American painters of the 20th century. However, for years the series was unavailable in its entirety, with half the paintings belonging to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the other half at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Triangle residents can now experience the legendary 60-piece series in one place, thanks to the Harlem-based nonprofit Triple Candie's exhibition entitled Undoing the Bastardization of the 'Migration of the Negro' by Jacob Lawrence. For the first time in decades, audiences will view Lawrence's work depicting the journey of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North as the artist intended. As the New York Times says, the series "is most effective when seen complete . . . only then do you get a sense of its wedding of intimacy and grandeur, and of its graphic virtuosity, played out in changes of perspective and interaction of symbolic forms."