This summer the National Gallery of Art hosts the city's first solo exhibition of the work of American artist Kerry James Marshall. On view from June 28 through December 7, 2013, In the Tower: Kerry James Marshall presents 10 paintings and more than 20 works on paper, affording a context for understanding the Gallery’s own Marshall painting, Great America (1994), and its powerful imagery. As a group, these paintings evoke the Middle Passage of slave ships between West Africa and North America, and the themes of immigration, class mobility, and aspiration central to American life.