Field Museum’s epic ‘Migration of the Negro’ captures immigrant hardship

The controversy surrounding immigration has never gone away.

Whether it’s Middle Eastern refugees in Europe or Mexican immigrants in the United States, they’ve all faced similar hardships and prejudice. The Migration of the Negro, an epic series of 60 paintings by Jacob Lawrence, reminds us of the perpetual nature of these struggles.

“It’s a classic story that has universal themes,” says Peter Nesbett, co-director of a new Field Museum exhibit on The Migration that begins this Friday. “[The paintings have] great relevance to contemporary life - the displacement of people all over the world, in search of new homelands, in search of better opportunities…escaping poverty [and] escaping poor social conditions.”

Arguably the most celebrated African-American artist of his time, Lawrence began work on The Migration in 1940, and it received widespread acclaim when the Downtown Gallery in New York exhibited it in November 1941.

“Anyone from any generation or age can come into this work,” says Shelly Bancroft, who also co-directed the Field Museum’s exhibit. Bancroft put on a similar exhibition with Nesbett at their not-for-profit art gallery, Triple Candie in Harlem, and she says the paintings should be appreciated for their unique aesthetic as well.

“They’re very simple in composition, and Lawrence would just use the bare elements to create his paintings so that there’s no distraction," Bancroft says. "[You] can have a huge range of experiences from purely appreciating them visually, to appreciating the breadth of the journey and the sadness at times of the journey...”

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Field Museum plans to record family histories from its own staff and members in the spring, according to Alaka Wali, director of the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change at the Field Museum. “Everybody has a story about a journey,” says Wali, and she says members and staff will have an opportunity to document theirs for posterity.

The exhibit also presents an opportunity to see Lawrence’s work in its entirety. Even though he intended The Migration paintings to be shown as a whole, the series did not remain together long, with different halves sold to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The originals have rarely been displayed together since, and though the Field Museum’s exhibit consists of reproductions, Nesbett says they remain a complete and fairly accurate presentation close to Lawrence’s original vision.

The exhibit will be open through July 6 while general admission to the Field Museum, as well as The Migration exhibit, will be free in February.