Exploring Great Migration in art
Starting Saturday, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presents an exhibition that explores the social and cultural impacts of the Great Migration. In one of the largest movements of people in United States history, some 6million Black people relocated from the American South to states in the North, Midwest and West, including California, from 1910to 1970.
These internal migrants sought to escape racial violence and pursue economic and educational opportunities in their new hometowns, from New York City, Baltimore and Chicago to Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco. More than 300,000Black people settled in the Bay Area, most coming to work in World War II shipyards and creating a Black culture that flourished through music, dance, literature, film and visual arts.
The exhibition, “A Movement in Every Direction:
Legacies of the Great Migration,” features newly commissioned works by 12artists who explore their personal relationships to this historical event through painting, sculpture, drawing, video, sound, and immersive installation. For example, the video installation “Leave! Leave Now!” by photographer and UC Berkeley graduate Carrie Mae Weems, presents the incredible life of her grandfather Frank Weems, a prominent tenant farmer and union activist who survived being attacked by a White mob in 1936and made his way to Chicago.
The exhibition, co-organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art (MMA) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), shows how the Great Migration continues to reverberate in people's lives and communities.
Details: Saturday through Sept. 22; 2155Center St., Berkeley, $14admission; bampfa.org.