Julian Lucas: Happiness Pursued. Paradise Lost.

In his first solo museum exhibition, Claremont-based photographer Julian Lucas explores the idea of home and its relationship to the American Dream as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. The exhibition theme is based on the assertion that home is a state of mind and the American Dream is stratified in relationship to race and access to power.

Through multiple photographic series, Lucas offers intimate portraits while exploring the historical and socioeconomic forces shaping the lives of his subjects. In his Exodus series, Lucas documents the ongoing story of the Great Migration, which began with black people fleeing the Jim Crow South. It is a story that affected the artist’s own family and continues for many, as unaffordable housing forces them to continue to migrate, to seemingly never put down roots.

Lucas’s Apt #31 project explores home in a more intimate context by documenting a family living in a one-bedroom apartment.