Jacob Lawrence, Bethany Collins

Episode No. 435 features curator Elizabeth Hutton Turner and artist Bethany Collins.

Along with Austen Barron Bailly, Turner is the co-curator of "Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle." The exhibition, which is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts through April 26, presents Lawrence's 1954-56 "Struggle: From the History of the American People." The series presents a revisionist and pictorial history of the first five decades of the American republic, or what Lawrence called "the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy." The PEM exhibition marks the first time in more than 60 years that the paintings have been together. 

The exhibition also features three artists engaging with Lawrence's work and ideas: Derrick Adams, Hank Willis Thomas and Bethany Collins, who presents her America: A Hymnal, a 2017 artist's book featuring 100 versions of the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," written from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The song's ever-changing lyrics remain legible, while the tunes that (ostensibly) unify the songs has been nearly burned away in favor of scorch marks and other residue. The gallery includes artist-made wallpaper and a six-track audio recording of six different versions of the song.

Collins's work frequently addresses language, song and how they relate to national and racial identities. She's had solo shows at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the University of Kentucky and at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Last year alone she was featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Richmond, Va. 

On June 26 the Frist Art Museum in Nashville will present "Evensong," an exhibition featuring Collins's address of a related song, "The Star Spangled Banner."