Freedom's Journal: The Art of Jerry Pinkney

Master watercolorist and renowned illustrator, Jerry Pinkney (born 1939) is celebrated worldwide. The exhibition, Freedom's Journal will include approximately eighty-five of the artist's illustrations, focusing on the subject of Civil Rights and the pursuit of freedom. 

The installation will include Pinkney's illustrations for Charles L. Blockson's groundbreaking article, "Escape from Slavery: The Underground Railroad," which appeared in the July 1984 issue of National Geographic. The article is credited with transforming popular perceptions of the cooperative system that helped those fleeing slavery to reach the North and Canada. Pinkney's illustrations for Minty: The Story of the Young Harriet Tubman (1996), about the childhood years of Tubman who was enslaved on a Maryland plantation, will be shown alongside those for I Want to Be (1993), the story of a young girl of the twentieth century whose dreams of the future are unbounded.

Also on view will be Pinkney's watercolors for a book he considers to be among his most important accomplishments, The Old African (2005). A collaboration with the author Julius Lester, The Old African is inspired by the 1803 revolt of Igbo captives aboard a slave-trade vessel off the coast of Georgia. Words and images communicate the strength and courage of the human spirit while conveying the terrible historic facts and brutality of slavery. These will be joined by Pinkney's imagined portraits of the men and women memorialized in the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York.

Watercolors for other books such as John Henry (1994), David's Songs (1992), Tonweya and the Eagles and Other Lakota Indian Tales (1979), and Journeys with Elijah: Eight Tales of the Prophet (1999) will illuminate the range of Pinkney's astonishing career.

The exhibition's title, Freedom's Journal, is inspired by one of Pinkney's illustrations for Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs (1993) that will also be on view. The first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States, Freedom's Journal was founded in 1827 and its logo appears in one of Pinkney's illustrations.

Pinkney was born and raised in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art (now the University of the Arts). He has illustrated more than one hundred books and received many awards, among them the Caldecott Medal, five Caldecott Honor Medals, five Coretta Scott King Awards. He has been honored by the Society of Illustrators with a Lifetime Achievement Award and, in 2012, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website