ByIANSlife

August 17, 2022 (IANSlife) Jacob Lawrence and the Children of Hiroshima is now available at the Phillips Collection. The museum's most recent exhibition reexamines the impact of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, through a dialogue between Jacob Lawrence's Hiroshima prints and selected drawings by Honkawa Elementary School students. The clear call and response in these two powerful bodies of work, created 35 years apart, convey the emotional impact of nuclear warfare as well as the potential for peace and reconciliation. The exhibition  will be on display from August 23 to November 27, 2022.

“The Phillips has an enduring and deeply valued relationship with the work of Jacob Lawrence,” says Vradenburg Director and CEO Dorothy Kosinski. “We are so pleased to partner with All Souls Church Unitarian on this exciting collaboration. They are a historic DC organization with deep ties and connections in the community.”

When Jacob Lawrence was selected by Limited Editions Club to illustrate one of their titles in 1983, he chose John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, a vivid account of six survivors of the atomic bomb. Lawrence’s haunting scenes are cloaked in dissonant shades of pink, red, yellow, and blue. Lawrence intentionally generalized the features of the skull-like heads to make a universal statement about “man’s inhumanity to man.”

“To present Jacob Lawrence’s Hiroshima series for the first time in Phillips’s history together with the children’s drawings from Honkawa Elementary School demonstrates the powerful conversation between art and significant moments of our time,” shares Chief Curator Elsa Smithgall.

In December 1947, Reverend A. Powell Davies inspired his congregation at All Souls Church Unitarian to collect and donate school supplies to children affected by the atomic bombing at Honkawa Elementary School. In response, Honkawa students sent a collection of drawings to the church depicting happy memories and moments in bright colours that did not allude to the loss and devastation in their lives. The drawings were returned to the surviving artists in Hiroshima in 2010.

“The Hiroshima Children's Drawings are predicated on the human wisdom of hope...hope for the elimination of nuclear weapons as a part of human relations,” says All Souls Church Unitarian Executive Director Traci Hughes-Trotter. “It is a testament that the drawings are paired with Lawrence’s Hiroshima series by All Souls Church Unitarian and The Phillips Collection to join in the hopeful cry of “never again."

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