They came to Chicago

IN 1945, the African American novelist Alain Locke and his good friend Jack Conroy, a white working-class writer and activist, co-authored one of the first and best studies of Black migration to the North titled They Seek a City.

The book drew on research on the migration done by Bontemps and Conroy for the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration. Illinois had one of the largest Federal Writers Projects in the country: its members included Richard Wright, whose own migration study, 12 Million Black Voices, and 1940 blockbuster novel Native Son put Chicago and its migration history on the cultural map of the U.S. forever.

The dynamic political and cultural radicalism of early 20th century Chicago as a city of migrant artists, writers and workers is on beautiful display until June 2 at the Chicago Art Institute. The exhibition They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910-1950, is the best single exhibit ever put together on the topic.

Why should you go see it?

Because it shows how Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera influenced Chicago painters like Charles White.

Because it shows how African American and Jewish writers and painters found common ground in fighting racism.

Because women not only built but led the cultural arts in 1930s and 1940s Chicago: the painter Margaret Burroughs, a co-founder of the South Side Community Arts Center and later founder of the DuSable Museum, and Elizabeth Catlett, woodcut artist extraordinaire.

Because the radical left suffused the words and images of Chicago artists trying to represent the migration to Chicago as part of a re-making of the U.S. proletariat. See for example, at the Art Institute Morris Topchevsky's A Century of Progress, where unemployed workers hang idly by factory gates reading The Daily Worker.

And because it displays first editions of migration novels like William Attaway's Blood on the Forge, and rare photographs of migrants by Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange, best known for her iconic "Migrant Mother."

To top it all off: visitors can purchase a stunning 116-page catalog on the exhibit ($35), an eye-popping illustrated chronology with an excellent historical essay and additional works not seen in exhibit.

In short, They Seek a City is a must see. Run, don't walk. Seek the city!