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Seeing America – topic: Immigration

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Good Shepherd, 1917, oil on canvas, 25-1/2 x 32 inches (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art) — Painted after the end of World War I and amid pressure to "represent his race" as a Black man, Tanner brings biblical scenes into the modern world

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Good Shepherd

by Dr. Mindy Besaw, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris

Rolanda, a close friend of Frida Kahlo, explores her Mexican identity in the 1930s with surrealism and a volcano

Rosa Rolanda, Self-Portrait

by Dr. Jennifer Padgett, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank

The Know-Nothings: a short-lived party with long-term influence.

Nativism and the Know-Nothing Party: American Art ...

by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott

Jamie Wyeth, Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986, oil on masonite, 91.4 x 127.3 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.163) ©Jamie Wyeth — The Wyeths have a long history of painting the American story

An American Story

by Taylor L. Poulin and Dr. Beth Harris

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Little Joe with Cow, 1923, oil on canvas, 71.1 x 106.7 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art) — Kuniyoshi came to the US as a teen and loved his adopted country, but was considered a possible enemy during WWII.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Little Joe with Cow

by Dr. Jennifer Padgett, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris

George Benjamin Luks, Street Scene (Hester Street), 1905, oil on canvas, 65.5 x 91.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, 40.339, Dick S. Ramsay Fund) — Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants came to America.

George Luks, Street Scene (Hester Street)

by Margarita Karasoulas, Assistant Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum and Dr. Steven Zucker

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, photogravure, 33.5cm x 26.4cm (LACMA) — Was this the first modern photograph? Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage

The first modern photograph?

by Eve Schillo, LACMA and Dr. Beth Harris

Roger Shimomura, Diary: December 12, 1941, 1980, acrylic on canvas, 127.6 x 152.4 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the artist, © Roger Shimomura) — Superman makes an appearance in what looks (at first sight) like a Japanese print.

Superman, WWII, Japanese Americans

by Dr. Sarah Newman, Smithsonian American Art Museum

David Gilmour Blythe, Justice, c. 1860, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 61.3 cm (Fine Art Museums of San Francisco) — The dubious justice of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party

Immigration and the Know-Nothing Party

by Emily Jennings, Director of School and Family Programs, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Dr. Beth Harris

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (sculptor), Gustave Eiffel (interior structure), Richard Morris Hunt (base), Statue of Liberty, begun 1875, dedicated 1886, copper exterior, 151 feet 1 inch / 46 m high (statue), New York Harbor — Two countries honor their love of democracy with a huge statue of a woman! Neither let women vote, though.

Light of democracy, the Statue of Liberty

by Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay and Dr. Steven Zucker

Ben Shahn, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1931-32, tempera and gouache on canvas mounted on composition board, 84 × 48 inches (Whitney Museum of American Art) — Shahn makes an not-so-subtle comparison between Christ and two Italians executed for a crime they didn’t commit.

Prejudice at the trial of Sacco & ...

by Dr. Lara Kuykendall

Todros Geller, Strange Worlds, 1928, oil on canvas, 71.8 x 66.4 cm (Art Institute of Chicago) — Geller captures the tensions of the Jewish immigrant experience in the early 20th-century United States.

Strange Worlds

by Sarah Alvarez and Dr. Steven Zucker