America 250 – Kent Portfolio

To commemorate the Bicentennial of the United States, Lorillard, a division of Loews Theaters, Inc., produced the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence in 1974. The company asked artists across the country the question, “What does independence mean to you?” Over a hundred artists answered Lorillard’s inquiry and after countless interviews, the company selected twelve artists for inclusion in the portfolio.

Unusual for a commissioned art project, the artists were given no restrictions on their creativity – be it size, color, or subject matter. The only requirement was to interpret the question, “What does independence mean to you?”

The interpretations of independence varied from artist to artist – some artists depicted the theme purely as a celebration of our country’s bicentennial, some took a historic approach, while others dove deeper. For instance, Colleen Browning reflected on what it meant to be an immigrant in the United States, while Jacob Lawrence reimagined the experience of African American parents having the freedom to vote in 1920s New Jersey during the Jim Crow era, and Fritz Scholder pointed to the irony of a people who were treated as obstacles to expansion celebrating the bicentennial.

The artists’ works were reproduced in 125 portfolios and gifted to museums across the country. The Mobile Museum of Art was one of the fortunate recipients. In addition, the American Federation of the Arts (AFA) and the United States Information Agency (USIA) further commemorated the Bicentennial and traveled the portfolio to museums and other institutions across the country and internationally to Europe, Africa, and Asia.