Exhibition Catalog | Jacob Lawrence
Explore a gift of drawings, prints, and paintings by African American modernist Jacob Lawrence addressing Black history and civil rights, public life, faith, and creativity.
Explore a gift of drawings, prints, and paintings by African American modernist Jacob Lawrence addressing Black history and civil rights, public life, faith, and creativity.
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CAT. 17<br />
The Swearing In<br />
1977<br />
Silkscreen<br />
20 × 30 in.<br />
2013.110<br />
<strong>Lawrence</strong>’s art demonstrates an awareness<br />
of the people located at the<br />
physical and social margins of any situation. This<br />
print, commissioned by The Presidential Inaugural<br />
Committee of Washington, D.C., is no exception. The<br />
committee approached prominent artists including<br />
<strong>Lawrence</strong>, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol<br />
to design prints for a portfolio commemorating the<br />
inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. The year<br />
after <strong>Lawrence</strong> produced this print for the project,<br />
Carter appointed him to a six-year term on the<br />
National Council on the Arts.<br />
Instead of concentrating on the President<br />
and the ceremony, <strong>Lawrence</strong> depicts those on<br />
the fringes of the crowd. The racially mixed group<br />
contains people of all different ages, many holding<br />
tiny American flags. The figures face right, toward<br />
the official stage that we cannot see, and which may<br />
lie beyond their view as well; some of them have<br />
climbed up into the trees in order to secure a better<br />
vantage point. They gathered to experience a<br />
historic moment celebrating America’s hard-won<br />
democracy, yet they strain to catch a glimpse of the<br />
ceremony and actually be a part of it.<br />
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