LACMA Collects: Scenes from the Great Migration
19 Oct 2014 - 01 Feb 2015
Elizabeth Catlett
Sharecropper, 1952
Linocut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the 2011 American Art Acquisitions Group.
© Estate of Elizabeth Catlett
Sharecropper, 1952
Linocut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the 2011 American Art Acquisitions Group.
© Estate of Elizabeth Catlett
LACMA COLLECTS: SCENES FROM THE GREAT MIGRATION
19 October 2014 – 1 February 2015
To complement Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, this installation features works from LACMA’s permanent collection that reveal scenes of daily life in rural and urban areas of the United States just before and during the Great Migration. During this period, which ran from about 1910 to 1970, African Americans in the South began to make their way to urban areas in the North (and eventually the West) in search of better economic and social opportunities. Facilitated by increasingly accessible rail travel, families and individuals relocated to cities such as New York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Detroit, among others. To many black communities at the time, the migration was also believed to be God’s will.
The objects that are part of LACMA Collects: Scenes from the Great Migration illustrate the different ways that white and black artists responded to this movement. While Archibald Motley and his family had migrated two decades before this significant demographic shift, his later works, particularly his scenes of African American neighborhoods in Chicago, document the initial emergence of dynamic diverse communities in large cities.
19 October 2014 – 1 February 2015
To complement Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, this installation features works from LACMA’s permanent collection that reveal scenes of daily life in rural and urban areas of the United States just before and during the Great Migration. During this period, which ran from about 1910 to 1970, African Americans in the South began to make their way to urban areas in the North (and eventually the West) in search of better economic and social opportunities. Facilitated by increasingly accessible rail travel, families and individuals relocated to cities such as New York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Detroit, among others. To many black communities at the time, the migration was also believed to be God’s will.
The objects that are part of LACMA Collects: Scenes from the Great Migration illustrate the different ways that white and black artists responded to this movement. While Archibald Motley and his family had migrated two decades before this significant demographic shift, his later works, particularly his scenes of African American neighborhoods in Chicago, document the initial emergence of dynamic diverse communities in large cities.