A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

Contemporary artists and writers reflect on the Great Migration and the ways that it continues to inform the Black experience in America

The Great Migration (1915–70) saw more than six million African Americans leave the South for destinations across the United States. This incredible dispersal of people across the country transformed nearly every aspect of Black life and culture. Offering a new perspective on this historical phenomenon, this incisive volume presents immersive photography of newly commissioned works of art by Akea, 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. The artists investigate their connections to the Deep South through familial stories of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance and consider how this history informs their working practices. Essays by Kiese Laymon, Jessica Lynne, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Willie Jamaal Wright explore how the Great Migration continues to reverberate today in the public and private spheres and examine migration as both a historical and a political consequence, as well as a possibility for reclaiming agency.

Published in association with the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of Art

Exhibition Schedule:

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson
(April 9–September 11, 2022)

Baltimore Museum of Art
(October 30, 2022–January 29, 2023)

Brooklyn Museum
(March 3–June 25, 2023)

California African American Museum, Los Angeles
(August 5, 2023–March 3, 2024)

Jessica Bell Brown is curator and department head of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Ryan N. Dennis is chief curator and artistic director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) at the Mississippi Museum of Art.