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September 7: Jacob Armstead Lawrence born in Atlantic City, New Jersey; parents are Jacob and Rosa Lee Lawrence.
Family moves to Easton, Pennsylvania, where daughter, Geraldine, is born.
Parents separate. Rosa Lee Lawrence moves the children to Philadelphia where another son, William, is born.
Rosa Lee Lawrence moves to New York City. Jacob and his siblings remain in foster homes in Philadelphia until 1930.
Rosa Lee Lawrence moves family to Harlem, where they live in an apartment at 142 West 143rd Street. Lawrence attends grammar school at P.S. 68 and Frederick Douglass Junior High School (P.S. 139). After school hours, attends day-care program at Utopia Children's House (also called Utopia Children’s Center) at 170 West 130th Street, where he studies arts and crafts with Charles Alston. Paints nonfigurative geometric designs and makes papier-mâché masks and three-dimensional stagelike tableaux in small boxes.
Attends church services and Sunday school at Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he hears Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., deliver sermons (early 1930s).
Attends the High School of Commerce (until 1934) while continuing to study with Charles Alston, this time at the WPA Harlem Art Workshop, in the New York Public Library’s 135th Street branch. The classes are sponsored by the College Art Association.
Wins prize in Sunday school at the Abyssinian Baptist Church for drawing map illustrating the travels of the apostle Peter.
Continues to study with Charles Alston and Henry Bannarn at the WPA Harlem Art Workshop, relocated to 306 West 141st Street (a.k.a. Alston-Bannarn Studios or Studio 306). Rents space in corner of Alston's studio until 1940.
Drops out of high school when his mother loses her job. Holds several part-time jobs including delivering newspapers and liquor and working for a printing shop.
Reads Thomas Craven’s Modern Art: The Men, the Movements, the Meaning.
Meets "Professor" Charles Seifert, a lecturer and historian who has a large library of African and African American literature. Seifert offers Lawrence use of his library and encourages him to make use of Arthur Schomburg’s collection at the New York Public Library. Participates in bus trips organized by Seifert to museum exhibitions, including African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art.
Begins painting scenes of life in Harlem, using commercial tempera (poster) paints on lightweight brown paper. Several early paintings depict his immediate environment, including his studio and life at home with his family. Other early works offer a biting, satirical view of life in Harlem, highlighting poverty, crime, racial tensions, and police brutality.
Exhibits his work in group exhibitions at the Alston-Bannarn Studios at 306 West 141st Street (also in 1937).
Works for six months in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) near Middletown, New York; makes drawings of life in the CCC.
Watches Charles Alston paint WPA mural Magic and Medicine, which is installed in 1937 at the Harlem Hospital.
Addison Bates, a cabinetmaker with a workshop at the Alston-Bannarn Studios, gives Lawrence a solo exhibition in his studio.
Sees W. E. B. Du Bois’s play Haiti at the Lafayette Theater. Begins research on Haiti in the Division of Negro History, Literature, and Prints at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in preparation for his first series–The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture. The series is completed in 1938 and consists of 41 paintings depicting L’Ouverture’s role in establishing the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
With the assistance of Harry Gottlieb, secures two-year scholarship to American Artists School (organized by the John Reed Club, a Communist organization) at 131 West 14th Street. Studies with Gottlieb, Eugene Morley, Anton Refregier, Philip Reisman, and Sol Wilson.
April—May: Exhibits six pencil drawings in a group show of the Harlem Artists Guild at the 115th Street branch of the New York Public Library. Exhibits in a group exhibition at the American Artists School, where he is a student.
Sees solo exhibition of William Edmonson’s sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.
Applies to WPA Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP). Rejected because of age requirement (artists had to be at least 21 years old).
Begins research for a series of paintings on the life of Frederick Douglass, the Maryland slave turned abolitionist, speaker, and writer.
February: Has solo exhibition at the Harlem YMCA, sponsored by the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild. Also exhibits in Twenty-one NYC Negro Artists at the Harlem Community Center.
September: With the assistance of Augusta Savage, a sculptor and teacher at the Harlem Art Workshop whom Lawrence met earlier at the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, is hired by the WPA/FAP easel division. Employed for 18 months, submitting to the division two paintings every six weeks.
Exhibits at Dillard University, New Orleans, Fisk University, Nashville, and Brooklyn College.
Continues to paint genre scenes of life in Harlem. Makes frequent visits to museums and modern art galleries.
February: Exhibits in two-person show with Samuel Wechsler at the American Artists School. Exhibition receives positive review in ARTnews, which notes that his "style… is easy to call primitive… but closer inspection reveals draughtsmanship too accomplished to be called naïve."
The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture (1938) is exhibited in a room of its own as part of Contemporary Negro Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is organized with the assistance of the Harmon Foundation. A writer for Newsweek singles out Lawrence as "a discovery."
Exhibits in group show at the Labor Club, New York.
Completes series of 32 panels entitled The Life of Frederick Douglass, which he gives to the Harmon Foundation as collateral against a loan of approximately $100.
March: Paintings reproduced in Survey Graphic, "First Generation of Negro Artists."
May: Through the efforts of Claude McKay, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture is exhibited at the De Porres Interracial Council headquarters on Vesey Street, New York. Alain Locke praises Lawrence’s work in an important essay, "Advance on the Art Front," published in Opportunity magazine, noting that he is an "intuitive genius" and that his work exhibits a "modernistic" sensibility. Locke uses Lawrence’s work to underscore his argument that there is "no essential conflict between racial or national traits and universal human values."
Begins research for a series on Harriet Tubman, the former slave who became an abolitionist and important figure in the Underground Railroad.
Moves temporarily to 292 West 147th Street.
Completes series of 31 panels entitled The Life of Harriet Tubman, which he also provides as collateral to the Harmon Foundation in exchange for a second loan of approximately $100.
April 17: Secures $1,500 fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund to complete a series of paintings on "the great Negro migration during the World War." His application states his desire to have the work shown in "a series of exhibitions in art galleries, schools, and public buildings" and "to try to have this work published in book form." Lawrence’s Rosenwald application is accompanied by recommendations from Alain Locke, Lincoln Kirstein, Helen Grayson, and Carl Zigrosser.
Moves to 33 West 125th Street, where he rents an unheated loft for $8.00 a month. Other artists and writers with studios in the building include Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Ronald Joseph, Claude McKay, and William Attaway. He remains there for 18 months.
July: Wins second prize at Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro, 1851—1940 at the American Negro Exhibition in Chicago.
Meets Jay Leyda, assistant film curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Leyda introduces him to Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco while he is working on Dive Bomber and Tank mural at the museum. Leyda, who becomes a close friend, also acts temporarily as an agent and introduces Lawrence to documentary filmmaker Irving Jacoby, who becomes an early patron.
Begins research for The Migration of the Negro series at the Schomburg Collection, 135th Street branch, New York Public Library.
November: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture exhibited at Columbia University, New York, concurrent with an exhibition of woodblock prints by Hokusai.
December: Included in Afro-American Art at Fisk University, Nashville. The Life of Frederick Douglass (1939) and The Life of Harriet Tubman (1940) exhibited at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Life of Harriet Tubman is also exhibited at the Southside Community Art Center in Chicago.
Alain Locke’s The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and the Negro Theme in Art is published, including reproductions of selected paintings from The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Spring: Works on 60 panels of The Migration of the Negro simultaneously, completing them with the assistance of Gwendolyn Knight, an artist who prepares the gesso panels and helps write the captions. Also secures a $1,200 renewal of his Rosenwald fellowship to paint a series on the life of the abolitionist John Brown. In an undated letter of intent, Lawrence writes, "with the remainder of my Rosenwald Year I plan to go to Virginia to live on a farm and make a study in the form of paintings of the life of the Negro in rural communities. If I receive another Rosenwald Grant, I plan to make a composite study of the Negro in Harlem, after which I plan to try to have these published in book form."
June—July: Edith Halpert of the Downtown Gallery and Alain Locke correspond regarding a comprehensive exhibition of African American art at her gallery that is to take place in December. Locke introduces Lawrence’s work to Halpert, who introduces it to Deborah Calkins, an assistant art editor at Fortune magazine.
July 24: Marries Gwendolyn Knight in New York. They travel to New Orleans, their first trip to the South, living in a rooming house at 2430 Bienville Avenue through the end of the year. While in New Orleans, he paints The Life of John Brown, a series of 22 images, as well as individual paintings depicting life and segregation in the South.
August 13: Halpert writes Lawrence in New Orleans to express her interest in representing him.
November: Fortune publishes a color portfolio of 26 panels of The Migration of the Negro, with text. The Downtown Gallery commemorates the event by exhibiting the series in the main gallery.
December 9: American Negro Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, the exhibition planned by Halpert and Locke and sponsored, in part, by Adele Rosenwald Levy, opens at the Downtown Gallery. It includes The Migration of the Negro.
Still in New Orleans, joins the Downtown Gallery, New York, at the encouragement of Alain Locke, becoming the first African American artist to be represented by a major New York commercial gallery. Exhibits there regularly in solo and group exhibitions until 1953. Gallery represents Stuart Davis, John Marin, Ben Shahn, Charles Sheeler, and others.
February: Adele Rosenwald Levy purchases the even-numbered works in The Migration of the Negro for the Museum of Modern Art, and Duncan Phillips agrees to exhibit the entire series at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C. During the exhibition, Phillips purchases the remaining 30 panels.
February—May: Visits relatives of his mother in Lenexa, Virginia, where he paints bleak scenes of rural life, labor, and poverty. Also experiments with oil paint, which he abandons.
April: Exhibits in group exhibition at the Downtown Gallery.
April 18: Secures $1,200 renewal of his Julius Rosenwald fellowship, which he plans to use to paint a group of paintings on life in Harlem when he returns to New York.
June: Returns to New York and resides temporarily at 1851 Seventh Avenue before leaving to work as a summer art instructor at Wo-Chi-Ca (Workers Children’s Camp) in Port Murray, New Jersey. While there, paints at least six theater backdrops for campers’ plays including Spring Plow, a play about Thomas Jefferson; a French street for a play about Bastille Day; three for a play about Puerto Rico; and one for a Chinese play. The camp is loosely affiliated with the IWO (International Workers Organization), a Communist organization. Lawrence is recruited to join the Communist Party but never does.
Fall: Moves to an apartment at 72 Hamilton Terrace in Harlem, where he and Knight Lawrence remain for a year.
October: The Museum of Modern Art organizes a 15-venue national tour of The Migration of the Negro that ends at the museum in October 1944. The showing of the exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon coincides with racial unrest at the Kaiser Shipyards, and a public forum on race relations is held at the museum.
November: Four paintings are published in Survey Graphic as "How We Live in the South and North." The issue is edited by Alain Locke.
December: Awarded sixth purchase prize at Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
May: Solo exhibition of the Harlem paintings at the Downtown Gallery receives favorable reviews in a variety of publications. Newsweek compares Lawrence’s talents with those of Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, and W. C. Handy. ARTnews comments that the paintings are even better than those in The Migration of the Negro, for which Lawrence has become widely known.
September: Moves from Harlem to 385 Decatur Street, Brooklyn, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, near Knight Lawrence’s family.
October: Inducted into U.S. Coast Guard as steward’s mate; attends boot camp at Curtis Bay, Maryland. Stationed with an African American contingent at Ponce Training Station, St. Augustine, Florida, where he works as a steward at the officers’ training camp and lives in an apartment above his commanding officer’s garage. Writes to his dealer, Edith Halpert, of the horrible conditions for blacks in the South and notes that he plans to complete a group of drawings entitled How the Negro Views the South, which he hopes she can arrange to have published.
Included in the Brooklyn Museum’s watercolor biennial and the University of Nebraska’s annual and in Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists at the Institute for Modern Art, Boston.
Publication of James A. Porter’s Modern Negro Art, which includes the work of Lawrence, Horace Pippin, and William Edmondson in a chapter entitled "Naïve and Popular Painting and Sculpture."
Assigned to USS Sea Cloud, Boston, a weather patrol boat and the first racially integrated ship in U.S. naval history. The ship is commanded by Captain Carlton Skinner who promotes Lawrence to petty officer, 3rd Class, with public relations status that allows him to paint Coast Guard life full-time. Chooses atypical subjects for a combat artist, depicting scenes of daily life, rather than portraits of the officers, the ship, or images of war. When the USS Sea Cloud is decommissioned, Lawrence is reassigned to the USS General Wilds P. Richardson, a troop transport ship stationed in Boston that travels to England, Italy, Spain, Gibraltar, Port Said (Egypt), and Karachi (in present-day Pakistan). Completes sketches of his travels in spiralbound notebook.
April: Included in American Negro Art: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture at the Newark Museum, New Jersey.
Sister, Geraldine, dies of tuberculosis.
October: Solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Paintings by Jacob Lawrence: Migration of the Negro and Works Made in U.S. Coast Guard, which receives positive reviews. Art Digest notes of the Migration series that "no professional sociologist could have stated the case with more clarity or dignity" and that the Coast Guard paintings are "handsome in their simplified yet somehow sophisticated design."
Included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Twelve Contemporary Painters, which travels to 12 venues. Included in annuals at the Art Institute of Chicago, Atlanta University, the University of Nebraska, and the City Art Museum, Saint Louis.
January: Included in The Negro Artist Comes of Age at the Albany Institute of History and Art.
March: Included in Four Modern American Painters: Peter Blume, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Jacob Lawrence at the Institute for Modern Art, Boston.
November: Included in 1945: New Painting and Sculpture by Leading American Artists at the Downtown Gallery.
Decides to paint series depicting experience of war. Applies for a John Simon Guggenheim Post Service fellowship. Alfred Barr, Francis Henry Taylor (director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Robert Tyler Davis (director, Portland Museum of Art, Oregon) write letters of recommendation. Receives fellowship notification of award in October while still in the service.
December: The Life of John Brown (1941) is exhibited for the first time at the Downtown Gallery and begins a 15-venue United States tour, sponsored by the American Federation of Arts. The series receives positive reviews in the mainstream art press. Art Digest notes that Lawrence "has made of this saga a powerful and compelling series. Simplified in approach, and, in several instances, highly abstract, they are never obscure in their import and their message is amplified through the technique employed."
December 6: Discharged from U.S. Coast Guard and returns to Brooklyn, where he begins paintings of laborers: shoeshine boys, domestic servants, seamstresses, and carpenters.
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and the City Art Museum, St. Louis. Included in biennials at the Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
January: Receives achievement award from New Masses at a dinner "honoring Negro and white Americans whose achievements in the arts, sciences, and public life are major contributions toward greater racial understanding." Other award recipients include Mary McLeod Bethune, Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson.
Begins work on the War series, painting the panels individually and signing them as they are completed rather than working on them simultaneously as he did with his earlier series.
May: Included in Six Artists out of Uniform at the Downtown Gallery.
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Nebraska.
June: Included in American Painting, from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day at the Tate Gallery, London.
July 2—August 28: Teaches in the summer session at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, at the invitation of Josef Albers. Albers hires a private train car to transport the Lawrences to and from Asheville so they need not move to the "colored" section of the train at the Mason-Dixon Line. The Lawrences never leave the school’s campus during their ten-week stay.
November: Included in Exposition internationale d’art moderne at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris.
December: Included in Three Negro Artists: Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, Richmond Barthé at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Commissioned by Walker Evans, then an editor at Fortune magazine, to execute paintings of Negro life in the Southern "Black Belt." Travels to Vicksburg, Mississippi, Tuskegee, Alabama, New Orleans, and Memphis. Three of the ten paintings are published in August 1948, with commentary by Evans.
Fall: Completes 14 paintings for the War series.
November: War series (1946—7) exhibited for the first time at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, and then in December at the Downtown Gallery. Time magazine notes that the series is "by far his best work yet." ARTnews remarks that Lawrence "is one of the few painters who can make stylization and design function beyond decorative ends."
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, and the University of Iowa. Included in the Brooklyn Museum’s watercolor biennial.
April: Wins first place purchase award in Seventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints by Negro Artists at Atlanta University.
Summer: Exhibits for first time at the Venice Biennale.
Commissioned to create illustrations for Langston Hughes’s One-Way Ticket, a collection of poems. Executes brush and ink drawings that differ significantly from earlier drawings in an attempt to find a style more compatible with printing technologies. Six drawings are included in the publication.
Completes commissions for New Republic and Masses and Mainstream (also 1949).
Included in annuals at the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago (wins Norman Wait Harris medal), the Carnegie Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Butler Institute of American Art, the University of Iowa, the University of Nebraska, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Receives certificate of recognition from Opportunity magazine.
Conceives of idea of painting series on "a history of the Negro people in the United States." Begins project five years later (1954) as Struggle… From the History of the American People.
July: Voluntarily enters Hillside Hospital, Queens, New York, for treatment of depression. Edith Halpert contributes to his medical expenses, helps Knight Lawrence find employment, and provides Lawrence with art supplies, which he uses to paint images of life in the hospital. He remains at Hillside Hospital for four months, leaving on November 12.
September: Included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition Juliana Force and American Art: A Memorial.
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the University of Nebraska. Included in the Brooklyn Museum’s watercolor biennial.
January: Included in two-person exhibition, Little Show of Work in Progress: Paintings by Robert Gwathmey and Jacob Lawrence, at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
January 16: Returns to Hillside for a seven-month stay. Continues to paint images of hospital life with a focus on modern forms of therapy. Remains a resident until August 4.
October 15: New York Times Magazine includes feature article on Lawrence’s stay at Hillside Hospital–"An Artist Reports on the Troubled Mind." Exhibition of hospital paintings opens at the Downtown Gallery one week later to positive reviews in mainstream art press. A reviewer for Art Digest comments that "clearly nothing can destroy this artist’s objectively discerning eye."
Publication of Oliver Larkin’s seminal Art and Life in America. Larkin characterizes Lawrence as a social painter and writes that to "praise Lawrence for his ingenious patterns was to belittle their meaning as the shapes of tortured and congested living, the arabesques of white brutality."
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
May: Receives honorary award from the Committee for the Negro in the Arts.
Attends numerous theatrical performances with Charles Alan, associate director of the Downtown Gallery, and begins work on a group of paintings on this theme inspired, in part, by productions at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Exhibits in the São Paulo Bienal.
Included in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum’s watercolor biennial.
April: Wins award in the Brooklyn Museum’s biennial of the Society of Brooklyn Artists.
December: Invited by the United States Information Agency to participate in an international travel and lecture program with the goal, according to the agency’s letter, of "counteracting the widespread ignorance that exists abroad regarding the United States." Declines invitation.
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the University of Illinois.
January: Solo exhibition, Performance: A Series of New Paintings in Tempera by Jacob Lawrence, at the Downtown Gallery. Mainstream press is positive but less exuberant than for previous exhibitions. Art Digest notes that Lawrence has abandoned social content, addressing instead problems of "expression and technique."
Executes paintings depicting people playing games–checkers, chess, dominoes, and cards (through 1958).
Edith Halpert and Charles Alan, a long-time employee of the Downtown Gallery, agree to create a new gallery–the Alan Gallery–that will represent the work of the younger artists from the Downtown Gallery stable, including Lawrence and Jack Levine. The Downtown Gallery continues to represent only the most established, older artists, including Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, and John Marin. Lawrence is unhappy with the new arrangement.
Included in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art and biennial at the Brooklyn Museum.
Begins research at the Schomburg Library for a series of 60 paintings on the history of the United States. Completes five study drawings by May.
May—July: Works as a fellow at the Yaddo Foundation, Saratoga Springs, New York, where he continues work on the series, completing six paintings by the end of the year.
October: Included in Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
December 16: Applies for a Chapelbrook Foundation fellowship for $2,000 to continue work on a "pictorial history of the United States." Jay Leyda acts as a reference. Lawrence projects that with the fellowship he will complete the series in two years.
Included in annuals at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
January: Exhibits in two-person show, Reuben Tam and Jacob Lawrence, at the Philadelphia Art Alliance.
Begins teaching at Five Towns Music and Art Foundation, Cedarhurst, Long Island (until 1962, and again 1966—8), and at Pratt Institute, New York.
May: Invited to enter mural competition for the United Nations Building in New York. During summer, completes study for the mural, which is exhibited in the fall with the five other finalists at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Shares first prize with Stuart Davis, but the mural is never executed owing to a lack of funding.
September—November: Visits Yaddo Foundation on his second fellowship. Continues work on the new series, Struggle… From the History of the American People, completing an additional ten panels by the end of the year.
December: Purchases an apartment at 130 Edwards Street, in downtown Brooklyn.
October: Included in Mural Sketches and Sculpture Models at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Included in annual at the University of Illinois.
Completes first 30 panels of Struggle… From the History of the American People series.
December: Struggle… From the History of the American People (1954—6) exhibited at the Alan Gallery. Exhibition is favorably reviewed in Time magazine, which notes that "the fluid balance between abstraction and realist rendering is the most interesting… facet of this suite of illustrations." Art press coverage is widespread but mostly descriptive, on several occasions comparing the works with murals of the 1930s.
Exhibits in the Venice Biennale.
Included in annual at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and biennial at the Brooklyn Museum.
Charles Alan, Lawrence’s dealer, restructures his business, deciding to reduce his stable of artists from twenty to six and to buy works wholesale from other artists rather than sell them on a consignment basis. Lawrence is not one of the six artists to be represented by Alan.
October: Receives the Pyramid Club Award for achievement in painting.
Included in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Decides not to complete the remaining 30 panels of Struggle… From the History of the American People series.
Serves as president of the New York chapter of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Selden Rodman, an authority on Haitian and American folk art, describes Lawrence as "the ablest painter the Negro race has so far produced in America–perhaps anywhere."
May: Struggle… From the History of the American People is exhibited again at the Alan Gallery. Series is sold intact to a collector who breaks it up and sells panels individually over a 30-year period.
October: Joins faculty at Pratt Institute, New York (until 1970).
In a letter to Jay Leyda, writes: "As you probably know, things here are very exciting–the big issues at this time are whether or not to have integration in the public schools… and trying to reach the moon. Both seem to be a little time off still. I think the moon problem will be solved before the one on integration."
Included in annuals at the Des Moines Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
April: Included in Art: USA: 59, A Force, A Language, A Frontier, organized by Lee Nordness at the New York Coliseum.
July: Included in American Sculpture and Painting: American National Exhibition in Moscow, which is later exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
December: Selected by the Ford Foundation for a nationally touring retrospective to be circulated by the American Federation of Arts in 1960.
Included in annual at the University of Illinois.
Completes paintings on library theme.
May: Solo retrospective opens at Brooklyn Museum and tours nationally to 16 other venues, mostly galleries and libraries at historically black colleges. Exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue containing an essay by Aline Louchheim Saarinen. Saarinen characterizes Lawrence as a narrative painter and "an artistic anomaly." She defends his work against the label of "primitive" by noting "the greater dimension of his experience and perception" but also "his conscious sensitivity to and control over his artistic means." Critical response to the exhibition in Time magazine and the mainstream art press is overwhelmingly positive. ARTnews notes that Lawrence is "undoubtedly one of the few painters who can handle a social message and painting simultaneously."
Cedric Dover’s American Negro Art is published, which refers to Lawrence as a "unique episodic painter" and describes him as a "primitive by intention."
Decides to travel to Africa, but visa is denied by State Department. Writes to Edith Halpert for assistance. Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence applies for U.S. passport and is denied; later able to obtain British passport because she was born in Barbados and could claim dual citizenship.
October: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Painting Exhibition, at the Washington Federal Savings and Loan Association of Miami Beach, Florida.
Begins paintings on contemporary civil rights and the themes of interracial marriage, integrated education, and nonviolent protest.
December: Exhibits in group show at the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) offices in Lagos, Nigeria.
Included in annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the University of Illinois.
Becomes associated with the gallery Terry Dintenfass Inc., New York, through the encouragement of the painters Robert Gwathmey and Philip Evergood who also show there.
October: Solo exhibition in Lagos and Ibadan, Nigeria, organized by the AMSAC and the Mbari Artists' and Writers' Club Cultural Center, which includes selections from The Migration of the Negro (1941) and War (1946—7), at Lawrence’s recommendation.
October 31—November 4: Is granted visa and travels to Nigeria, accompanying an exhibition of his work. Lectures on the influence of African sculpture on European and American modernist art, particularly Cubism.
December: The Migration of the Negro exhibited at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Serves as president of the artists’ committee of Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Ad Reinhardt serves as vice-president.
March: Solo exhibition at Terry Dintenfass Inc., New York, of paintings pertaining to the civil rights struggles in the United States. Press is positive. Arts magazine states that "his skill at expressing his feelings in dense, well-composed patterns continues to be impressive." Newsweek notes that "the force of Lawrence’s paintings depends on his being a Negro as much as the force of James Baldwin’s writing depends on his being a Negro. He has always painted his own world, as any artist does, and it happens that his world is that of the American Negro at mid-century."
Completes his first limited-edition print, an image of a black protestor being carried away by two white police officers (Two Rebels). The print is also published as a poster for his first exhibition at Terry Dintenfass Inc.
Serves on the advisory board for the founding of the Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., and on the coordinating committee for an exhibition of contemporary African art that is sponsored by the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) and exhibited in Nigeria in 1964. Among other committee members are James A. Porter, Ulli Beier, and J. Newton Hill.
April—November: Sells apartment in New York and returns to Nigeria with Knight Lawrence to teach and to "steep myself in Nigerian culture so that my paintings, if I’m fortunate, might show the influence of the great African artistic tradition." They are blacklisted on their arrival in Lagos and are unable to secure housing because, as Lawrence wrote to Jay Leyda, "of my so-called background." Aware that they are under constant surveillance by U.S. intelligence, they plan to leave Nigeria for Italy and then return to the U.S., where they promise to pursue a high-visibility lawsuit through the ACLU. They are encouraged to stay and are provided a car and driver. They remain in Lagos for a total of four months, then move to Ibadan for four months before returning to the United States. While in Nigeria, Lawrence completes paintings and drawings of African life and experiments with new painting techniques.
May: Included in The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.
November: Two-person exhibition, Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Lawrence, opens at the AMSAC offices in Lagos, Nigeria.
Exhibits in annuals at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
January: Solo exhibition of paintings and drawings created in Nigeria at Terry Dintenfass Inc. Exhibition receives mixed reviews by mainstream art press, which critiques the work for being decorative and minutely patterned.
February—May: At the invitation of Mitchell Siporin, an artist with whom Lawrence exhibited at the Downtown Gallery in the 1940s, works as artist-in-residence at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. Executes drawings of student protests and police brutality as well as the first known self-portraits. Also continues to paint scenes of Nigeria (through 1966). Commutes to campus from an apartment on Brattle Street in Cambridge.
March: Solo exhibitions at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and Morgan State College, Baltimore.
Returns to New York, moving into an apartment at 211 West 106th Street. Also living in the building are Raphael and Moses Soyer, socially committed, figurative painters who had taught at the American Artists School when Lawrence was a student there in the late 1930s.
Elected into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Helps organize an exhibition of work by black artists residing in the United States to be shown in Dakar, Senegal. Other members of the committee include Charles Alston, Henry Geldzahler, William Lieberman, Roy Moyer, James A. Porter, Charles White, and Hale Woodruff.
Serves as a member of the National Screening Committee for the Fulbright-Hays scholarship program (until 1967).
Exhibits in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
February: 21 panels from Struggle… From the History of the American People exhibited at the Martin Gallery, New York.
Begins teaching at the New School for Social Research, New York (until 1969).
Brother, William, dies in New York of drug overdose.
April: Included in Ten Negro Artists from the United States at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal. Also in ACA Galleries exhibition Protest Paintings–USA: 1930—1945.
Commissioned by Time magazine to paint a portrait of Stokely Carmichael. Travels to Atlanta to meet Carmichael at SNCC headquarters shortly before Carmichael steps down as chairman.
September: Included in The Negro in American Art at UCLA and Art of the United States: 1670—1966 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Included in annual at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Teaches Life Drawing, Painting, and Composition course at the Art Students League, New York (through 1969; on leave of absence 1969—71), where former mentor Charles Alston has taught since the 1950s.
September: Included in The Portrayal of Negroes in American Painting: United Negro College Fund Exhibition at the Forum Gallery, New York.
October: Included in The Evolution of Afro-American Artists: 1800—1950 at City College of New York, organized by the Harlem Cultural Council.
Creates paintings for Harriet and the Promised Land, which is published in 1968 by Windmill Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Several paintings are not included in the final publication, including one that depicts Harriet Tubman with a gun.
Included in annuals at the Carnegie Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
January: Solo exhibition of Paintings for Harriet and the Promised Land (1967) at Terry Dintenfass Inc. Reviews in mainstream art press are positive but largely descriptive. Arts notes that "Lawrence undeniably understands how illustrations should work–not as a repetition of text but as its natural complement to accelerate the action." Included in Six Black Artists at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.
Summer: Teaches at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
September 12: Participates in symposium "The Black Artist in America" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Is referred to by moderator Romare Bearden as "America’s foremost Negro painter" but is challenged by Tom Lloyd, fellow panelist and an active participant in the black arts movement.
October: Included in Thirty Contemporary Black Artists at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Travels to 12 additional venues.
Begins regularly incorporating images of builders, carpenters, and cabinetmakers into his paintings. The builders motif becomes a primary element in his work over the next 30 years. Begins dozens of pencil studies based on the woodcuts of Andreas Vesalius, a sixteenth-century Italian doctor who made elaborate drawings of cadavers.
December: Solo exhibition of The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture at Fisk University, Nashville.
Carroll Greene, Jr., begins research for a major monograph on Lawrence to be published by Harry N. Abrams. Completes interview with Lawrence for the Archives of American Art Oral History Program.
February: Included in American Art of the Depression Era at Amherst College, Massachusetts.
Commissioned by Windmill Books, Simon & Schuster to illustrate Aesop’s Fables. Completes 23 ink drawings.
Summer: Teaches at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Declines invitations to teach at State University College in Buffalo and at Harvard University.
September: Mother dies.
September—March 1970: Visiting artist at California State College, Hayward, at invitation of the painter Raymond Saunders with whom he and Knight Lawrence live.
November: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The Migration of the Negro exhibited at Saint Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire.
Included in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
February: Included in Dimensions of Black at La Jolla Museum of Art, California.
Included in Five Famous Black Artists, organized by Edmund Barry Gaither at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
March: Nominated for membership in the National Academy of Design but is not elected.
March—June: Visiting artist, University of Washington, Seattle.
May: Included in Afro-American Artists, New York and Boston at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists; solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Work in Progress, at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle.
Becomes the first visual artist to receive the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award.
Summer: Teaches at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
September: University of Washington offers Lawrence a full professorship, which he accepts. Pratt Institute counters by appointing him full professor, coordinator of the arts, and assistant to the dean.
April: Included in Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
May: Included in Black Artists: Two Generations at the Newark Museum, New Jersey. The Life of John Brown (1941) exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
July: Included in The Artist As Adversary at the Museum of Modern Art.
Commissioned by Edition Olympia to create a silk-screen print for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Creates image of five black runners with obvious references to Jesse Owens’s triumphant victory in Berlin in 1936.
Moves with Knight Lawrence to suburban neighborhood in Seattle near the University of Washington, residing at 4316 37th Street NE. Sets up studio in his attic, where he works until 1995.
September: Travels to London, Paris, and Munich.
October: Included in Art by Black Americans: 1930—1950 at the Smithsonian Institution.
November: Carroll Greene, Jr., visits Seattle for several days to interview Lawrence for forthcoming book.
Publication of Elton Fax’s Seventeen Black Artists, which includes Lawrence. Fax discusses work from the 1940s and 1960s but not the 1950s and states that "not a single trace of irritation, anger, and bitterness that motivated his type of art expression ever invaded Lawrence’s public oral statements. He reserved them, instead, for his paintings."
Summer: Spends six weeks in New York, creating limited-edition prints and working with Carroll Greene, Jr., on forthcoming monograph.
Travels to Munich Olympics as a guest of the Olympic Games Committee.
Commissioned by the Washington State Capitol Museum to create "one or more paintings" based on the story of George Washington Bush, an African American pioneer who was one of the original settlers of Washington State. Proposes creating one painting and four finished drawings, but instead completes five paintings (in 1973).
November: Charles Alan, who was Lawrence’s dealer in the 1950s, joins staff at Terry Dintenfass Inc. and replaces Carroll Greene, Jr., as author of the monograph to be published by Abrams.
Whitney Museum of American Art begins research for traveling retrospective of Lawrence’s work, hiring Milton W. Brown, a noted authority on American art and social realism, to write the catalogue.
Exhibits in annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson’s Six Black Masters of American Art is published, which includes Lawrence, Joshua Johnston, Robert Scott Duncanson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Horace Pippin, and Augusta Savage.
Receives honorary doctorates from Pratt Institute, New York, and Denison University, Granville, Ohio.
Travels to Barbados.
September: Included in Blacks: USA: 1973 at the New York Cultural Center.
October: Paintings of builders exhibited for the first time at Terry Dintenfass Inc.
Elsa Honig Fine’s The Afro-American Artist: A Search for Identity is published. Fine writes that "Lawrence seemed to fulfill all that Alain Locke had hoped for in the Black artist. He painted his people with warmth and humor but without sentimentality, utilizing the rhythms and patterns derived from his African heritage." In her opinion, eventually Lawrence became an "illustrator of the first order, but he thereby failed to fulfill his early promise as a leader of a school of Afro-American artists."
Charles Alan completes draft of the monograph. Abrams secures photographs and permissions but puts publication on hold because of Alan's death.
The Detroit Institute of Arts, for reasons of conservation, refuses to lend the complete John Brown series to Lawrence’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art. The DIA approaches Lawrence about translating the paintings into silk-screen prints so they can accommodate requests for the series. Works with Ives-Silman, the New Haven—based workshop associated with Josef Albers. Project is completed in 1977.
May: The Whitney Museum of American Art opens retrospective of Lawrence’s paintings that travels to five other U.S. venues. Milton Brown’s essay characterizes Lawrence as a social painter who "addresses universal concerns from the vantage of his particular experience as a black person." States that Lawrence was "the first wholly authentic voice of the Black experience in the plastic arts." Discusses his work as an anomaly, as stylistically unique, noting that from the outset "he avoided the appearance of sophistication, though his use of ‘expressionist’ distortion would indicate an awareness of modern art forms." The exhibition receives positive reviews in the mainstream art press. Art in America describes the work as narrative and notes that Lawrence "has put back into painting everything that recent history has concentrated on removing." Also notes that "by an almost violent elimination of extraneous detail, he sums up the event or scene in a quintessential image that sticks in the mind long afterwards."
September: Included in Directions in Afro-American Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Commissioned by Lorillard Tobacco company to create a limited-edition print to be included in a bicentennial portfolio that includes works by Robert Indiana, Larry Rivers, Alex Katz, Marisol, and others. Creates silk-screen print on the subject of black suffrage.
Begins association with Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle. Gallery has long history of representing University of Washington professors and prominent Northwest modernists including Mark Tobey and Guy Anderson.
October: Included in The Black Presence in Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
November: Included in Jubilee: Afro-American Artists on Afro-America at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Commissioned by Transworld Art to create a print for a bicentennial portfolio titled An American Portrait. Depicts a moment of confrontation between police dogs and marchers during the 1965 peace march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery.
June: Included in United States Information Agency exhibition Two Hundred Years of American Painting, 1776—1976, which travels to Europe.
Cofounds the Rainbow Art Foundation in New York with Romare Bearden, Willem de Kooning, and Bill Caldwell to assist young printmakers in the production, exhibition, and marketing of their work. Foundation supports the work of artists whose art is seldom seen by the general public, including the work of "indians, eskimos, asians, hispanics, and blacks."
September: Included in David Driskell’s exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
October: Solo exhibition, Graphics by Jacob Lawrence, at the Francine Seders Gallery.
Appointed elector for Hall of Fame for Great Americans; receives honorary doctorate from Colby College, Waterville, Maine.
Harry N. Abrams resumes plans to publish Lawrence monograph, commissioning Lawrence to execute a limited-edition print that will be used as a fund-raiser to offset publication costs.
Commissioned by the Presidential Inaugural Committee in Washington, D.C., to create a limited-edition print for a portfolio commemorating the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. Rather than create a portrait of the president, he depicts an ethnically diverse crowd straining to see the event from a great distance.
Completes translation of The Life of John Brown to silk-screen print.
November: Included in New York/Chicago: WPA and the Black Artist at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
March: Solo exhibitions at Terry Dintenfass Inc. and Spelman College, Atlanta.
October: The Life of John Brown exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
October: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings and Graphics from 1936 to 1978, at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.
December: Included in Representations of America at the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
Completes first mural commission–Games–for Kingdome Stadium in Seattle, Washington. Completes six additional murals over the next 12 years.
Artist and art historian Samella Lewis, in Art: Afro-American, notes that "Lawrence represents with distinction the first generation of recognized artists nurtured by the Black experience: his community was Black, his early teachers were Black, and his first encouragement came from Blacks.… As important as the fact that Lawrence is probably the best known, most published, and most influential living Black American artist is the fact that he is a humble man of great personal stature."
Appointed commissioner of the National Council of Arts by President Jimmy Carter.
January: Included in Six Black Americans: Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, Jacob Lawrence, Betye Saar at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton.
Completes mural–Explorations–for Howard University, which depicts the 12 academic disciplines of the university, dedicated to the black educator Mary McLeod Bethune.
In addition to executing paintings, prints, and murals for commissions, begins to concentrate on drawing. Completes a group of ten graphite drawings–images of labor and family life.
Receives honorary doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
January: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The Builder, at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson.
Commissioned by the Limited Editions Club to complete original artwork for translation to silk-screen prints and inclusion in a limited-edition book. Chooses John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946), creating eight paintings that depict Hiroshima after the detonation of the atomic bomb.
April: Solo exhibition at the Museum of African-American Art, Santa Monica College, California.
August: Solo exhibition of new drawings at the Francine Seders Gallery.
September—December: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture exhibited at the Conference for the Council of Churches, New York, and at the Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida.
January: Solo exhibition of new drawings at Terry Dintenfass Inc.
February: Solo exhibition at Stockton State College, Pomona, New Jersey.
March: Included in Celebrating Contemporary American Black Artists at the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead, New York.
Retires from teaching, becoming professor emeritus at the University of Washington.
October—December: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture exhibited at Howard University, Washington, D.C., and the Hampton University Museum, Virginia.
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
January: Included in The Rhythm of Life: Selected Works by Bearden, Gwathmey, and Lawrence at the Alexandria Museum of Art, Louisiana. Solo exhibition at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston.
February: Included in A Blossoming of New Promise: Art in the Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
April: Included in Since the Harlem Renaissance: Fifty Years of Afro-American Art, which opens at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and travels to five other venues.
Completes second mural for Howard University entitled Origins, 12 images pertaining to African American life and history.
September: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture exhibited at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon.
December: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Fifty Years of His Work, at the Jamaica Arts Center, New York.
Receives honorary doctorate from the State University of New York, and the Washington State Governor’s Award.
Creates group of 18 colored-pencil drawings on builders theme.
September: Included in Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800—1950, which opens at the Bellevue Art Museum, Washington, and travels to nine other venues.
Completes mural entitled Theater for University of Washington performance hall.
December: Solo exhibition of colored-pencil drawings at the Francine Seders Gallery.
Receives honorary doctorate from Howard University, Washington, D.C.
Begins working with Lou Stovall Workshop, Inc., Washington, D.C., to re-create images from The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture as silk-screen prints. Lawrence alters many of the images in the print format, heightening the drama of the original series.
July: Retrospective organized by the Seattle Art Museum tours nationally accompanied by the first major publication on the artist’s work–Ellen Harkins Wheat’s Jacob Lawrence: American Painter. Wheat characterizes Lawrence as a social painter whose sensibility was formed in Harlem during the depression. Book reproduces many formerly unpublished paintings, provides previously unpublished biographical detail, and addresses issues of artistic influence and the politics of being a successful African American artist in a predominately white art world.
Receives honorary doctorate from Yale University.
January: Included in Works by Artists Who Are Black at the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock.
Commissioned by the Washington State Arts Commission Art in Public Places Program to design two murals for the rotunda of the Washington State Capitol. Completes the cartoons for the murals–Debate I and Debate II–but resigns from the project after the recently completed murals of Michael Spafford, a University of Washington colleague, are covered with a curtain.
Receives honorary doctorate from Spelman College, Atlanta.
October: Included in Augusta Savage and the Art Schools of Harlem at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.
Completes two murals: Community, for the Joseph P. Addabbo Federal Building in Queens, New York; and Space, Time, Energy for the Orlando International Airport, Florida.
Receives the Artist Award from the College Art Association, the NAACP Third Annual Great Black Artists Award, and the Images Award for Outstanding Achievement in Art from the University of Pittsburgh.
January: The artist and art historian Samella Lewis organizes two solo exhibitions–Jacob Lawrence: Paintings and Drawings and Jacob Lawrence: Drawings and Prints–which travel throughout the Caribbean and Africa, sponsored by the United States Information Agency.
February: Solo exhibitions, Jacob Lawrence: The Washington Years, at the Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, and Jacob Lawrence: A Continuing Presence, at Syracuse University.
Commissioned by the Limited Editions Club to create original artwork for translation to silk-screen prints and inclusion in an artist’s book. Chooses to illustrate the Book of Genesis, creating eight paintings.
September: Included in The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism, which opens at the Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C., and travels to four other venues.
Receives honorary doctorate from Tulane University.
January: Included in Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710—1940, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Solo exhibition at Arizona State University, Tempe.
Completes mosaic mural entitled Events in the Life of Harold Washington for new Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago.
Receives National Medal of Arts from President George Bush.
February: Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938—40 begins its United States tour to 16 venues, accompanied by a catalogue by Ellen Harkins Wheat.
One of four artists commissioned by the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority to design murals for a new subway complex at Times Square. Completes initial maquette in 1996; completes final maquette in 1997.
April: Included in American Abstraction at the Addison Gallery of American Art, which travels nationally to eight venues.
Included in Art of the Forties at the Museum of Modern Art.
Peter Nesbett begins research on a catalogue raisonné of the artist's prints, which is sponsored by the Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle.
January: Solo exhibition at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Washington.
February: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: An American Master, organized by East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, travels nationally to seven other venues.
March: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The Early Decades, 1935—1950 at the Katonah Museum of Art, New York.
November: Included in Dream Singers, Storytellers: An African-American Presence, which travels to Japan before it is exhibited at the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton. Rizzoli Publications publishes Jacob Lawrence, with an essay by Richard J. Powell, as part of its Art Series.
Receives honorary doctorates from New York University, Rochester University, and Bloomfield College. Receives the National Arts Award from Links, Inc.
May: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: An Exhibition Presented by the Black Alumni of Pratt Institute, at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.
Begins association with Midtown Payson Galleries, New York.
September: The Migration of the Negro exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. under the title The Migration Series. A two-year tour follows, accompanied by a multiauthor catalogue edited by Elizabeth Hutton Turner. Exhibition receives tremendous critical response nationwide. Time magazine critic Robert Hughes remarks that the paintings "constitute the first, and arguably the best treatment of black American historical experience by a black artist" and that "they are of far greater power than almost all the acreage of WPA murals that preceded them in the 1930s."
November: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, at the Midtown Payson Galleries.
Receives Medal of Honor from the National Arts Club, New York.
February: Genesis series (1989) exhibited at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.
April: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: Works on Paper, at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.
September: Catalogue raisonné of prints is published by the Francine Seders Gallery and accompanies a nationally traveling exhibition organized by the Bellevue Art Museum, Washington. Peter Nesbett begins preliminary research for a catalogue raisonné of paintings, drawings, and murals.
October: Solo exhibitions, Jacob Lawrence: Prints and Drawings, at Shasta College, Redding, California, and Jacob Lawrence: Paintings 1971—1994, Inaugural Exhibition, at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Completes 12 paintings on the supermarket theme.
December: Solo exhibition of new paintings at the Francine Seders Gallery.
Receives the Charles White Lifetime Achievement Award in Los Angeles, and the Edwin T. Pratt Award from the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.
January: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence, An Overview: Paintings from 1936—1994, at the Midtown Payson Galleries. War series exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, New York.
November: Begins association with DC Moore Gallery, New York.
Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project is established as a nonprofit organization with an office in Seattle. Michelle DuBois joins staff of project. Stephanie Ellis-Smith begins working part-time in 1997.
Receives honorary doctorate from Harvard University and an award from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
December: Sells house and moves with Knight Lawrence to an apartment in downtown Seattle. Sets up a studio in an adjoining apartment.
Reworks group of study drawings from the late 1960s and 1970s based on the woodcuts of Andreas Vesalius.
March: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: An American Society in Transition, at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Spring: Undergoes back surgery; spends two months recovering from the operation.
July: Aesop’s Fables drawings (1969) exhibited at the Francine Seders Gallery.
October: Solo exhibitions, Jacob Lawrence: The Hiroshima Paintings, at the Tyler Museum of Art, Texas, After Vesalius: Drawings by Jacob Lawrence, at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and Jacob Lawrence: Drawings, 1945 to 1996, at DC Moore Gallery, New York.
Receives honorary doctorates from Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, and Seattle University and the Algur H. Meadows Award from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
March: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence, An American Vision: Paintings and Prints 1942—1996, at the Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner, Washington.
June: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture included in Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, which opens at the Hayward Gallery, London, and travels to five other venues in England and the United States.
Receives awards from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, and New York Artists Equity.
January: Drawings for Aesop’s Fables travel nationally to five venues. Solo exhibition at Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia.
Summer—Fall: Diagnosed with lung cancer. Undergoes radiation and chemotherapy.
July: Solo exhibitions, Jacob Lawrence as Muralist, at the Francine Seders Gallery, and Jacob Lawrence: Painting Life, at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery, Seattle.
September: Completes 12 paintings on the builders theme.
November: Solo exhibition, Jacob Lawrence: The Builders, at DC Moore Gallery.
Receives honorary doctorate from the Universities of Illinois and Chicago, and Washington State Medal of Merit.
October: Completes 12 paintings on the games theme.
Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americans for the Arts and the 6th Annual Golden Umbrella Award and Mayor’s Master Artist Award, Seattle.
December: With Knight Lawrence, establishes the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation to promote the creation, exhibition, and study of American Art.
January: Solo exhibition, Games, at Francine Seders Gallery.
Begins paintings on university theme, though none are completed.
June 9: Dies in his home at age 82.
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