Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/
Admission: USD 25/18/14
“I pick up my life, / And take it with me, / And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit,
/ Buff alo, Scranton, / Any place that is / North and East, / And not Dixie.”
Th ese are the opening lines from “One-Way Ticket,” by African-American
poet, Langston Hughes (1902–1967). Th e poem provides the emotional and
historical core of the “Migration” paintings by Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), a
series that depicts the extraordinary internal migration of African Americans
in the twentieth century. Not coincidentally, the poem also provides the title
of the current exhibition of the sixty paintings in Lawrence’s series, on display
at MoMA, New York, from 3 April to 7 September 2015.1 Shown together
for the first time in over twenty years, the paintings are surrounded by works
that provide context for the “great migration”: additional paintings by Lawrence,
as well as paintings, drawings, photographs, texts, and musical recordings
by other African-American artists, writers, and performers of the early to
mid-twentieth century.
“The Bulk of the Best Visible Things”: Judd’s Review of Twentieth Century Engineering at the Museum of Modern Art