The Prints of Jacob Lawrence, 1963–2000, showcased eighty-one prints by the master African American artist in a crowd-pleasing exhibition that provided a platform for one of the lesser-known parts of Lawrence’s extensive oeuvre. The screenprints, lithographs, etchings, drypoints, and single woodcut displayed in the show represented almost the entirety of Lawrence’s output as a printmaker and were brought together courtesy of the DC Moore Gallery in New York for this show at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. While the images, most of which are large and colorful in the artist’s trademark graphic figurative style, are filled with the themes that made Lawrence famous—African American history, Harlem, builders, hopefulness, and pride—this survey exhibition fell short, missing opportunities both to interpret the multiple resonances and interrelationships among these themes and to explain how the medium of printmaking in particular was well-suited to the populism of Lawrence’s content and style.

Admittedly, one of the difficulties inherent in the show was the eclectic variety of subject matter represented. While some subjects, such as street scenes featuring working-class African Americans, fall into neat categories, others—such as Morning Still Life (1976), a vibrant silkscreen depicting an almost Cezanne-esque compilation of fruit, flowers, and table linens, and The Ant and the Grasshopper (1997), a comic black-and-white woodcut illustrating one of Aesop’s fables—are one-off examples unusual in the artist’s body of work. The perception of eclecticism in the exhibition was only exacerbated by the hanging of the show in the museum’s cavernous basement galleries. Treated almost like discrete objects, the images were neither hung chronologically nor were they grouped according to theme, except in the cases of serial prints such as The Legend of John Brown (1977) where all twenty-two prints were logically hung in sequence.

In addition, the exhibition text struck me, paradoxically, as at once both sparse and overabundant. Blocks of contextual information were few, consisting only of one large biographical panel at the outset of the show, and then three smaller thematic panels: Jacob Lawrence and Printmaking; Jacob Lawrence and Harlem; and Jacob Lawrence and The Builders. These were placed at odd intervals throughout the galleries and did not successfully break up the exhibition into focal points. On the other hand, the information panels for each individual print frequently included extensive text meant to elucidate the work’s meaning, often through direct quotes from the artist. These texts were taken in most cases verbatim from Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints (1963–2000), A Catalogue Raisonné by Peter T. Nesbett (Seattle: Francine Seders Gallery, 2001), an updated and revised edition of an earlier catalogue by the same author published in 1994 in conjunction with a nationally touring exhibition as Jacob Lawrence: Thirty Years of Prints (1963–1993), A Catalogue Raisonné (Seattle: Francine Seders Gallery). (The 2001 edition was being sold by the Memphis Brooks Museum in lieu of a dedicated exhibition catalogue.) Because these panels relied so heavily on the words of Lawrence himself, they suggested one of the problems of the art historian/curator—how does one balance between allowing the artist to speak for his own work, and exercising the curatorial privilege of interpretation and analysis of that work in order to introduce fresh perspectives and possibilities beyond those that the artist wishes to acknowledge?

The fact that the exhibition lacked new research and a fresh interpretive voice is an indicator that the show was not really meant for professional art historians and scholars. Rather, the audience was likely intended to be casual, local museum-goers with an interest in African American art. These visitors may know some of Lawrence’s works, but probably have not been exposed to his prints. Indeed, the few text panels that were apparently unique to the exhibition served as attempts to educate visitors about different printmaking techniques. Hung in quick succession at the entrance to the galleries were an etching and drypoint, a color lithograph, a silkscreen, a black-and-white lithograph, and the woodcut, accompanied by labels that explained each process in detail and which stressed the affordability of prints compared with other media. The emphasis on processes was puzzling, since Lawrence’s imagery was probably of more interest to visitors than the technicalities of each method. Yet the notion of affordability—and the related concept of prints as populist art forms that are often visible to a larger number of people than are paintings—could have been a fruitful one if it had been better developed. It is fascinating to note how many different sorts of organizations published Lawrence’s prints as commemorations and fundraisers, an apparent indication of the popularity and applicability of Lawrence’s themes to a wide range of audiences. For example, The Swearing In (1977) was published by the Presidential Inaugural Committee in commemoration of the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, while Revolt on the Amistad (1989) was published by the AETNA Life Insurance Company and Spradling-Ames, Key West, Florida, on the 150th anniversary of the Amistad incident. Many prints were also published as posters, clearly extending the affordability and visibility of Lawrence’s work even further, but none of the posters were included or discussed in the show.

If the exhibition text tried to explain Lawrence’s populism through the notion of “affordability,” the prints themselves depict a different sort of populism, expressed in the way he treats familiar themes by emphasizing the contributions of commonplace people. My favorite examples of this were the silkscreens that comprise the series Eight Studies for “The Book of Genesis” (1989–90). The images narrate the story of Creation from Genesis 1:1–31 in an unexpected, lyrical, and folkloric way. The scene is set inside an African American church where the congregation sits and listens as the old, bearded black minister preaches the story. The bottom two-thirds of each of the eight panels is comprised of the hieratically scaled preacher, the dais on which he stands and its appurtenances (including a lectern and a glass vase holding a single flower), and the little massed congregation. The pastor’s vestments change color from panel to panel, as do his histrionic gestures. Powerful and a master of his craft, the preacher seems almost to become God himself as he testifies to the wonders of the Creation, seen through four recurring arches in the top third of the prints. “In the beginning all was void,” is the first episode of the story, and all the arches are flat black. But in the second panel, “And God brought forth the firmament and the waters,” swirling blue and white shapes seen beyond the windows along with rays of either light or wind coming through them seem joined with, yet divided from, the grey central section of the interior space which reads simultaneously as the floor of the church and the firmament that is separated from the waters outside. The slippages between interior and exterior, real and visionary space, and even the possibility that the images of Creation might simply be stained-glass windows in the church activate the story in a new and delightful way.

Eight Studies for “The Book of Genesis” presents a good example of how overarching themes may be found across the scope of Lawrence’s art, and further demonstrates this show’s inability to clarify such themes for viewers. In each frame of the series a small detail recurs—a toolbox positioned on the church floor speaks of creation and creativity by suggesting that God is a carpenter, a builder, a constructor. Building and making are constant topics in Lawrence’s prints. In the 1985 lithograph Man on a Scaffold, four African American builders, one on a scaffold, work collaboratively on a building in a black neighborhood where other local characters such as a mother with a baby, an amputee on crutches, and a man in pink pants and a matching top hat stroll in the background. Entering the picture plane from a sharp angle at the lower left corner is a red ladder. The text panel for this print quoted Lawrence relating the use of ladders in his art to his memories of urban fire escapes in 1930s Harlem. I don’t doubt this connection at all. But this is an instance where the curatorial privilege that I spoke of earlier could also illuminate other potential interpretations. Ladders, scaffolding, and staircases all suggest movement upward, rising, progress. They, and the related concept of climbing, are longstanding symbols found in many aspects of African American culture, for example, the spiritual “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” the National Association of Colored Women’s well-known motto from its early years, “Lifting as We Climb,” and sculptor Martin Puryear’s remarkable Ladder for Booker T. Washington (1996). These or similar connections could have been made through greater attention to thematic hanging in conjunction with labels that aimed to help viewers associate Lawrence’s images with larger, conceptual concerns.

Another example of a missed opportunity for interpretation might have been the lithograph The Studio (1996), a self-portrait of Lawrence ascending a staircase to the attic studio of his Seattle house. The artist seems to pause on a landing, not quite yet at the top of the stairs. In his right hand he grasps two paintbrushes while in his massively exaggerated left hand he seems to balance a pair of compasses lightly on his fingertips. Scattered around him on the floor and walls are his recognizable paintings, almost all of which clearly depict builders. Lawrence now posits himself as the God-like creator with drafting tools ready to measure out new worlds. Significantly, he has advanced a long way upward on his staircase, but he has not yet achieved the pinnacle, just as in Man on Scaffold the worker on the scaffold perches precipitously on an angle, reaching upward but not as high as he still can rise.

Aspiring toward a goal is without a doubt a chief concern represented in Lawrence’s prints. Aspiration in its many guises is explored in works such as Schomburg Library (1987), in which patrons of the famous institution read earnestly and labor under armfuls of books taken from the library’s riotously overflowing shelves; To the Defense (1989), where an awed black family (the family of a builder with a prominent toolbox, of course) is defended by a towering, heroic black lawyer questing after justice; and Olympic Games (1971), in which five black runners echo Jesse Owens in their bids for greatness. To aspire, to reach, to achieve, to create—these are classic concerns explored in African American art of Lawrence’s period, but in his work they also easily translate into universal desires. Unfortunately, the exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum—with its confusing hanging and uninspired labels—was mostly unable to evoke these larger themes. These weaknesses aside, the show was valuable for bringing together so many of Lawrence’s prints, allowing these universal ideas to be discovered through the means of his endlessly inventive artistic voice.