Triple Threat: The Public's Right to Own, Part III

According to Artnet.com, the folks at Harlem's Triple Candie have yet again staged an exhibition that's pushing the boundaries of homage and art integrity. You may recall their exhibitions of works "by" Cady Noland and David Hammons. Now, the artist they're championing through unconventional means is Jacob Lawrence.

Two notes: 1) I personally know and greatly admire the Directors of Triple Candie, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett. 2) Peter Nesbeitt is an expert on Jacob Lawrence's work. As Artnet puts it, he "was formerly director of the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, and is the co-author of the two-volume The Complete Jacob Lawrence (2000), which includes a catalog raisonné and Over the Line, a collection of essays. He is also author of Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963-2000)."

Here is what they're up to this time:

Which is better, a complete set of facsimiles or a limited selection of originals? Ambitious viewers can decide for themselves this month, as the Triple Candie exhibition space in Harlem presents full-color offset reproductions of the 60 paintings in Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration of the Negro, an epic work made by the 24-year-old artist in 1941. According to Triple Candie, Lawrence considered the paintings to be a single artwork and intended that they all be exhibited together, though he sold half the series to the Museum of Modern Art and half to the Phillips Collection shortly after it was made.

Despite Lawrence’s intentions, major Lawrence retrospectives have routinely included only parts of the work, and thus "radically misrepresented" it, Triple Candie says. The Lawrence retrospectives of 1960 (at the Brooklyn Museum and 16 other venues), 1974 (at the Whitney Museum) and 1986 (at the Seattle Art Museum) all featured only fragments of the work. Both MoMA and the Phillips Collection have also exhibited it in truncated form. The Migration of the Negro has never been shown in its entirety in Harlem, where it was originally made.

What’s more, the misrepresentation of the work continues to this day. The Triple Candie exhibition is mounted to coincide with "Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series: Selections from the Phillips Collection" at the Whitney Museum, Nov. 21, 2007-Jan. 6, 2008, which presents only 17 of the 60 panels. That show was originally scheduled to appear at the Studio Museum in Harlem, but had to be moved to the Whitney due to high humidity in the original venue’s galleries.

As Lindsay Pollock details in her book on Lawrence's dealer, Edith Halpert, the gallerist tried valiantly to sell the entire series to one collection, but neither Phillips or MoMA would agree to purchase all 60 panels. I do recall some agreement on their part at the time, though, to collaborate to permit full exhibitions of the whole work. Why that has turned out to be so difficult is a mystery to me.

So I get why Triple Candie is offended by this continuous misrepresentation of the work to the public (the title of their exhibition clarifies their feelings about this: "Undoing the Ongoing Bastardization of The Migration of the Negro by Jacob Lawrence,"), but once again I find myself uncomfortable with the nature of their response. I am on record as opposed to reproductions being exhibited as if art. Even when the nature of the reproductions is clearly stated, I find the context overwhelmingly misleading and thus potentially as much of a bastardization as only partial groupings.

While I totally appreciate Peter and Shelly's frustration with the institutions wanting to cash in on Lawrence's vision, but only so much as it's convenient for them, and admire the way they're putting their money where their mouth is in bringing attention to this fact, I still wince a bit at the idea that some young visitor will leave their exhibition thinking that the original series was done as prints.

All the same, I love their commitment and passion.