MyBGSUBGSU EmailSearchAcademicsAdmissionsThe ArtsAthleticsLibraryA to Z LinksBowling Green State University20th-century master broke art and race barriers
BOWLING GREEN, O.— The exhibition “Jacob Lawrence: Three Series of Prints - Genesis, Hiroshima and Toussaint L’Ouverture”
will be on display Aug. 23-Sept. 18 at the Willard Wankelman Gallery in the Bowling Green State University Fine Arts Center.
The exhibition will be complemented with a free public lecture about the artist. Noted art historian Dr. Leslie King-Hammond will reveal this man of great talent and passion in a slide-lecture about the artist titled “Jacob Lawrence and the School of Modernism” at 7 p.m. Sept. 9 in 204 Fine Arts Center. King-Hammond is dean of graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art and author of “Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence.”
The Jacob Lawrence exhibition features 44 works, including 31 color prints and 13 text pages from the three series. The exhibition is curated by Peter Nesbett, editor of “Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000)/The Catalogue Raisonne.”
The works come from the collection of Alitash Kebede of Los Angeles, and the exhibition and tour are organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, also of Los Angeles. The Bowling Green exhibit is funded in part by the Ohio Arts Council and the BGSU Ethnic Cultural Arts Program. King-Hammond’s talk is funded in part by the BGSU Departments of Ethnic Studies and Sociology and the Ohio Humanities Council.
"The exhibition of silkscreen prints features powerful examples of Lawrence's social commentary rendered in his signature patterned and abstracted style," said Jacqueline Nathan, director at the BGSU Galleries. "Lawrence's art reaches across social and racial boundaries to deliver thought-provoking interpretations of important historic events that even now continue to profoundly influence the contemporary world."
Beginning with his first published print in 1963, Lawrence produced a body of prints both highly dramatic and intensely personal. In his graphic work, the artist turned to the lessons of history and to his own experience. From depictions of civil rights confrontations to scenes of daily life, these images present a vision of a universal struggle toward unity and equality.
Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1917 and grew up in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. In the mid-1930s, he took art classes sponsored by the College Art Association and the WPA at the Harlem Community Art Center and, following a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School, worked in the easel division of the Federal Art Project.
In 1941, Lawrence became the first African-American artist included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, where he had a one-man exhibition in 1944. He lived and worked in New York City, teaching at numerous schools and universities until 1971, when he accepted a full-time faculty appointment at the University of Washington in Seattle, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 1983.
Lawrence, who died in 2000, is survived by a body of work that continues to be relevant and widely admired. During his lifetime, he received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts (1990), the NAACP Annual Great Black Artists Award (1988) and the Spingarn Medal (1970). His work is owned by more than 200 museums and has been the subject of several major retrospective shows that have traveled nationally.
The free exhibition can be viewed between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 1-4 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call 419-372-8525 or go to http://a r t.com/jacoblawrence.
The exhibition will be complemented with a free public lecture about the artist. Noted art historian Dr. Leslie King-Hammond will reveal this man of great talent and passion in a slide-lecture about the artist titled “Jacob Lawrence and the School of Modernism” at 7 p.m. Sept. 9 in 204 Fine Arts Center. King-Hammond is dean of graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art and author of “Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence.”
The Jacob Lawrence exhibition features 44 works, including 31 color prints and 13 text pages from the three series. The exhibition is curated by Peter Nesbett, editor of “Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000)/The Catalogue Raisonne.”
The works come from the collection of Alitash Kebede of Los Angeles, and the exhibition and tour are organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, also of Los Angeles. The Bowling Green exhibit is funded in part by the Ohio Arts Council and the BGSU Ethnic Cultural Arts Program. King-Hammond’s talk is funded in part by the BGSU Departments of Ethnic Studies and Sociology and the Ohio Humanities Council.
"The exhibition of silkscreen prints features powerful examples of Lawrence's social commentary rendered in his signature patterned and abstracted style," said Jacqueline Nathan, director at the BGSU Galleries. "Lawrence's art reaches across social and racial boundaries to deliver thought-provoking interpretations of important historic events that even now continue to profoundly influence the contemporary world."
Beginning with his first published print in 1963, Lawrence produced a body of prints both highly dramatic and intensely personal. In his graphic work, the artist turned to the lessons of history and to his own experience. From depictions of civil rights confrontations to scenes of daily life, these images present a vision of a universal struggle toward unity and equality.
Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1917 and grew up in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. In the mid-1930s, he took art classes sponsored by the College Art Association and the WPA at the Harlem Community Art Center and, following a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School, worked in the easel division of the Federal Art Project.
In 1941, Lawrence became the first African-American artist included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, where he had a one-man exhibition in 1944. He lived and worked in New York City, teaching at numerous schools and universities until 1971, when he accepted a full-time faculty appointment at the University of Washington in Seattle, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 1983.
Lawrence, who died in 2000, is survived by a body of work that continues to be relevant and widely admired. During his lifetime, he received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts (1990), the NAACP Annual Great Black Artists Award (1988) and the Spingarn Medal (1970). His work is owned by more than 200 museums and has been the subject of several major retrospective shows that have traveled nationally.
The free exhibition can be viewed between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 1-4 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call 419-372-8525 or go to http://a r t.com/jacoblawrence.
(Posted August 18, 2005)