Is it chance or design that brings major exhibitions by Horace Pippin and Jacob Lawrence to New York at more or less the same time—the retrospective “I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin” at the Metropolitan Museum and “Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series” at the Museum of Modern Art? (There’s no question about how or why the concurrent survey of Lawrence’s work from 1936 to 1994 at Midtown Payson Galleries was arranged, not that it wasn’t an excellent addition to the equation.) From my experience of how institutions like the Met and MOMA work, I suspect chance, although in many ways, the coincidence is provocative enough, if only for the questions it raises, to have warranted deliberate planning.

On the surface, there appear to be good reasons for putting substantial groups of paintings by Pippin and Lawrence in close proximity. They are both, after all,...

 

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