Dorothea LangeAmerican, 1895–1965Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California
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Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- 4 hours ago
- In this state since
- Sep 29, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the work
Migrant Mother is a photograph taken in 1936 in Nipomo, California, by American photographer Dorothea Lange during her time with the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration). The 28.3 by 21.8 cm (11 1/8 by 8 9/16 in) gelatin silver print depicts a mother anxiously gazing into the distance, with an infant in her lap and two older children huddling close by. The photo captures the plight of migrant farm workers who arrived in California en masse looking for employment during the Great Depression. Initially anonymous, the woman in the photo was identified as Florence Owens Thompson in 1978, following the work of a journalist for the California-based newspaper The Modesto Bee.
Read on
Since its publication, Lange's work has been considered symbolic of the Great Depression. It is in the public domain and has been widely reproduced in educational material, advertisements, and other media. Today, Migrant Mother is considered to be a part of the classic canon of American art and international photography. A print is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Particulars
- Accession number
- 2013.1559
What it shows
In the catalog
Comings and goings
Not on view at present
Art Institute of Chicago · Sep 29, 2026 — now · Verified
Was not on view
The Museum of Modern Art · Sep 29, 2026 — Sep 29, 2026 · Verified
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Art Institute of Chicago · Sep 28, 2026 — Sep 29, 2026 · Verified
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The Museum of Modern Art · Sep 28, 2026 — Sep 28, 2026 · Verified
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Art Institute of Chicago · Sep 27, 2026 — Sep 28, 2026 · Verified
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The Museum of Modern Art · Sep 26, 2026 — Sep 27, 2026 · Verified
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Art Institute of Chicago · Sep 26, 2026 — Sep 26, 2026 · Verified
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The Museum of Modern Art · Sep 25, 2026 — Sep 26, 2026 · Verified
Was not on view
Art Institute of Chicago · Aug 19, 2026 — Sep 25, 2026 · Verified
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago: the museum's own open data · fetched 4 days ago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of Dorothea Lange
The whole life28 October 1935
Divorce from Maynard Dixon
Lange and Dixon divorced on 28 October 1935, and on 6 December she married Paul Schuster Taylor, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
1936
Nipomo: aid is sent to the camp after her photographs
On her way home from weeks of shooting, Lange drove past a camp of pea-pickers at Nipomo, turned back and made five exposures of a woman with her children, Florence Owens Thompson. She showed the pictures to a San Francisco newspaper editor, who informed the federal authorities and published an article, and the government rushed aid to the camp to prevent starvation.
1941–1942
Gives up her Guggenheim Fellowship for the WRA
In 1941 Lange became the first woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor she gave it up to work for the War Relocation Authority (WRA), documenting the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans from the US West Coast.
c. 1942
Photographing the removal of Japanese Americans: Manzanar
Lange travelled through the towns and countryside of California photographing families that the government ordered out of their homes; she visited several temporary assembly centres as they opened and settled on Manzanar, the first of the permanent camps, in eastern California about 300 miles from the coast. The authorities impounded most of these photographs, and they were not seen publicly during the war.
c. 1965
Helps to curate her MoMA retrospective
Shortly before her death Lange helped curate a retrospective of her work for the Museum of Modern Art in New York; it opened three months after she died and was MoMA’s first solo retrospective of a woman photographer.
11 October 1965
Died
