Of all the thoughts and emotions evoked upon first seeing Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series in its entirety, a major one was, see it again. This time I promised myself to focus less on the history and more on his artistry.

The way the colors are positioned to engage and direct the eye flow is all the more astonishing when you know that Lawrence, at 23 years old, drew the scenes he’d conceived on 60 boards–and put all of a particular color down at the same time. The genius, advance planning, and concentration this took is beyond my imagining.

Each picture has a succinct caption, powerful in its understatement

The tumult of thoughts this show provokes are hard to sort out.

Ultimately, the history and the artistry are inextricably connected. I recently finished the second book in Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants series, moved to tears not only by the situation of the characters, but also in gratitude to Follett for harnessing his talents in service of telling a history we should never forget. I realize this is also true of Jacob Lawrence.

The show continues until Sept. 7th.

The chance to see the whole suite of 60 pictures at once should not be missed. MoMA owns the even-numbered panels and the Phillips Collection in D.C. has the other half of the suite. Peter Schjeldahl, in his 4/20/15 New Yorker review, calls this “a Solomonic division as misbegotten as would be, say, bisecting the ‘Mona Lisa.’”