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Jacob Lawrence: The Harriet Tubman Series

Saturday, January 18, 1986Sunday, March 2, 1986

Installation view of Jacob Lawrence: The Harriet Tubman Series. Image courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Digital Assets Collection and Archives, Buffalo, New York.

1905 Building

Jacob Lawrence: The Harriet Tubman Series presented a series of 31 poignant paintings on loan from the Hampton University Museum, Virginia. One of the foremost African American artists of this century, Lawrence (1917–2000) used cycles of paintings to explore the pathos of the African-American diaspora and the struggles of folk heroes. In the Harriet Tubman series of 1939, Lawrence documents the life of the ex-slave in astute graphic terms and with compositional rigor. Tubman was a driving force in the Underground Railroad, and each of the paintings in the exhibition has as its title an extensive text derived from historical documents. 

This exhibition was organized by Curator Susan Krane. 

Exhibition Sponsors

This exhibition and related programming were made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and from the National Endowment for the Arts.