Past Exhibitions

Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence February 6–May 4, 2003 SAM Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries

The most complete assessment of the late painter’s artistic development and creative process to date, the traveling exhibition Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence will bring over 200 works of art to the Seattle Art Museum’s Bill and Melinda Gates Gallery in its only West Coast stop.

For more than sixty-five years, Jacob Lawrence was an impassioned observer whose gaze was firmly fixed upon the complexities of our American tumult, from the Civil War period of the 1860s to the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the end of the twentieth century. His paintings made visible the complex realities of cultural difference and racism and their impact on our country’s identity. The exhibition presents works spanning the artist's career, including several that have never been exhibited before.

Lawrence is considered one of the great storytellers in the history of art. Through painted narrative cycles by artists such as Giotto, he learned how to move people with a story about African-American history that is strongly universal in theme. Lawrence developed his own command of the rhythms and geometries of composition. He believed fewer colors could make a stronger work.

Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917, Lawrence moved with his family to a settlement house in Harlem, New York, when he was 13. In the 1930s, he trained in art workshops sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, and became the first voice of the black experience to speak to a mainstream audience. Lawrence was the first modern African-American painter to break into the highly segregated art world, achieving national acclaim with the Migration of the Negro series he painted at age 24. In 1971, he moved to Seattle for a teaching position at the University of Washington and spent the remainder of his life working in the Northwest alongside his wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight, herself the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum concurrent with SAM’s presentation of Lawrence’s work. Lawrence died in his adopted hometown in June 2000.

Organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., to celebrate last year’s publication of the Lawrence catalogue raisonné (co-edited by former SAM interim curator Peter Nesbett and published by the University of Washington Press), the exhibition is curated in Seattle by Lisa Corrin, Deputy Director of Art/Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Jacob Lawrence American, 1917-2000 The Studio, 1977 Gouache on paper 30 x 22 in. Seattle Art Museum, Partial Gift of Gull Industries; John H. and Ann Hauberg; Links, Seattle; and Gift by Exchange from the Estate of Mark Tobey, 90.27