LEGACY OF THE GREAT MIGRATION
Between 1915 and 1970, in the wave of racial terror during the post-Reconstruction period in the United States, millions of black Americans fled their homes to other parts of the country. This movement of people, known as the Great Migration, caused great demographic, economic, and sociopolitical changes. The exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration brings together twelve contemporary artists who reflect on their impact on their lives and on social and cultural life, with new commissioned works, from large-scale installations, immersive films, tapestries, paintings, photographs, etc.: Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems.
In this exhibition it is intended to change the narrative of trauma for that of overcoming. It also speaks to those who resisted and stayed or returned home during this period, when the South lost generations of courageous creative talent.
Visitors can share their private and family migration stories through pod oral histories, facilitated at the exhibition.
This exhibition is organized together with the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th floor, Brooklyn Museum, New York. From March 3 to June 25, 2023.