Outreach Presentation Black History Month Everson Museum of Art Outreach Presentation Black History Month

The Migrants Cast Their Ballots, Serigraph, 1974 Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) The Migrants Cast Their Ballots, Serigraph, 1974 Born in New Jersey but raised in New York City's Harlem, Jacob Lawrence was the most widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. Known for producing narrative collections like the Migration Series and War Series, he brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught, and spent 15 years as a professor at the University of Washington. Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Philadephia Museum of Art. The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Phillips Colletrion and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

“This is my genre...the happiness, tragedies, and the sorrows of mankind as realized in the teeming black ghetto.” —Jacob Lawrence Self portrait, 1981 This is Harlem, 1943

Jacob Lawrence. The Migration Series. 1940-41 Jacob Lawrence. The Migration Series. 1940-41. Panel 40: The migrants arrived in great numbers. MOMA

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) Untitled, 1981 Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged from the "Punk" scene in New York as a gritty, street-smart graffiti artist who successfully crossed over from his "downtown" origins to the international art gallery circuit. In his short life, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a pop icon, cultural figure, graffiti artist, musician, and neo-expressionist painter. He was a precocious child, and by the age of four he could both read and write. By the time he was eleven, he was fluent in English, French, and Spanish. In the 1970’s Basquiat began spray painting buildings in Lower Manhattan, using the pseudonym SAMO, earning him notoriety and a certain amount of fame.

3 Heads, Crayon, 1982: Everson Museum of Art

Jean-Michel Basquiat Philistines, 1982

James Tanner Red light, Red light, 1988 Born:  1941 - Jacksonville, Florida  Known for:  abstract relief ceramic sculpture, painting, printmaking, teaching James L. Tanner is a ceramic sculptor, painter and printmaker. He is professor emeritus of ceramics at Minnesota State University where his teaching career spanned the years 1968 to 2003.

Carrie Mae Weams African Jewels, 2009 Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power. 

Mayflowers Long Forgotten, 2003 Installation view, Center of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain, 2010 Mayflowers Long Forgotten, 2003

https://youtu.be/pPDInpNoO50 Filmed in her Syracuse studio, artist Carrie Mae Weems discusses the impetus for her work "The Kitchen Table Series" (1990), a photographic investigation of a single domestic space in which the artist staged scenes of "the battle around the family" between women and men, friends and lovers, parents and children. https://youtu.be/pPDInpNoO50

David MacDonald b. 1945 Quilt Series “For more than four decades, David MacDonald has masterfully created richly patterned utilitarian objects from clay that have come to symbolize tremendous integrity and endurance. Despite the national recognition MacDonald has earned for his superb work, he remains committed to, and most content when he is producing, functional works of art in beautiful forms that will be touched, held, and most importantly used by people who will admire and appreciate their inherent beauty.”— Everson Museum of Art, 2011