This publication sets the precedent for the next generation of Lawrence scholars and studies in modern and contemporary discourse. The American Struggle explores Jacob Lawrence's radical way of transforming history into art by looking at his thirty panel series of paintings, Struggle . . . from the History of the American People (1954-56). Essays by Steven Locke, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Austen Barron Bailly, and Lydia Gordon mark the historic reunion of this series-seen together in this exhibition for the first time since 1958. In entries on the panels, a multitude of voices responds to the episodes representing struggle from American history that Lawrence chose to activate in his series. The American Struggle reexamines Lawrence's lost narrative and its power for twenty-first century audiences by including contemporary art and artists. Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas invite us to reconsider history through themes of struggle in ways that resonate with Lawrence's artistic invention. Statements by these artists amplify how they and Lawrence view history not as distant period of the past but as an active imaginative space that is continuously questioned in the present tense and for future audiences.

In his last and most overarching essay on the subject, Rudolf Arnheim encourages us to see the range of individuality in children's drawings and to recognize the child's creation of 'significant form' as a way of bringing coherence to his or her experience of the world. This groundbreaking book brings together distinguished critics and scholars, including Rudolf Arnheim, to explore children's art and its profound but rarely documented history. The contributors address central questions of how children use art to make sense of their experience and what really constitutes visual 'giftedness' in children. They also cover such topics as visual thinking, the influence of popular culture on children's drawings, giftedness versus education in children's drawings, process, and social interaction in drawing. Created to accompany an exhibition on children's drawings, "When We Were Young" features a stunning full-color gallery of drawings both by famous artists such as Ingres, Van Gogh, Picasso, Miro, and Klee when they were children and by extraordinary 'ordinary' children. An annotated chronology, with synopses and more than a thousand scholarly notes, offers a comprehensive survey of the literature and history of child art from the thirteenth century to the present. It includes essays by Rudolf Arnheim, Jonathan Fineberg, Misty S. Houston, Olga Ivashkevich, Christine Marme Thompson, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner.