Jacob Lawrence's "Struggle"
Episode No. 661 is a holiday clips episode featuring curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner was the co-curator of “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle.” The exhibition, which debuted at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts in 2020, presented Lawrence’s 1954-56 “Struggle: From the History of the American People.” The series presents a revisionist and pictorial history of the first five decades of the US republic, or what Lawrence called “the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy.” The exhibition marked the first time in more than 60 years that the paintings had been together. The excellent catalogue was published by University of Washington Press. Amazon offers it for $45. For images, see Episode No. 435.