MFA VTS: Immigration to the US in the 19th and 20th century in Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

What is going on in this image? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Title: The Steerage Date: 1907 By: Alfred Stieglitz American, 1864–1946 Object Number: 50.826 Dimensions: Image: 11.1 x 9.2 cm (4 3/8 x 3 5/8 in.) Framed: 37.1 x 29.5 x 2.5 cm (14 5/8 x 11 5/8 x 1 in.) Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print Credit Line: Gift of Miss Georgia O'Keeffe Descriptions: Estate #: 125 D   Label Text: Alfred Stieglitz and Early Modern Photography: Labels in order of exhibition (9/13-12/29/96): Alfred Stieglitz. American, 1864–1946. The Steerage, 1907. Gelatin silver print. Published as a small photogravure in Camera Work, October, 1911, and as a large-scale photogravure accompanying the journal 291, September-October, 1915. Gift of Miss Georgia O'Keeffe, 1950 50.826 The Steerage: After its publication in 1915 as a large photogravure accompanying an issue of the journal 291, The Steerage--a photograph initially made in 1907--came to be recognized as one of Stieglitz's key images. Many Americans have understandably regarded the image as an icon of the American experience, associating it with the immigration to this country of parents and grandparents. In actual fact, the boat on which Stieglitz took the picture was heading for Europe. Stieglitz himself later acknowledged the human and social content of the image but characterized it primarily in terms of pure form. A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right, the white draw-bridge with its railings made of circular chains--white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape. From our later historical perspective, the image strikingly anticipates the angles of vision and abstract spatial complexities of experimental photography between the two World Wars. Provenance: Artist; to Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986); by whom given to MFA April 20, 1950

What is going on in this image? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Title: Italo-American Celebration, Washington Square Date: about 1912 By: William James Glackens American, 1870–1938 Object Number: 59.658 Status: Not On View Dimensions: 65.4 x 81.28 cm (25 3/4 x 32 in.) Medium: Oil on canvas Credit Line: Emily L. Ainsley Fund Web Description: After studying at the Pennsylvania Academy at night and making his living with John Sloan, George Luks, and Everett Shinn as an illustrator at The Philadelphia Press, William James Glackens continued his artistic education abroad. Cycling through Northern Europe with Robert Henri in 1895, Glackens returned to Paris, where he had ample opportunity to study French painters, particularly the works of Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Auguste Renoir, whom he greatly admired. Although he shared Henri's passion for the dark palette of Manet, by the time he painted this work Glackens had adopted the lighter tones and loose brushwork of Renoir.   Glackens established himself in New York City by 1896, and in 1910 he began a series of paintings depicting the Washington Square area. By then the park represented the demarcation between the old and new communities of New York.  Some of the most prominent New York families who traced their ancestry to the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers still resided in the brick townhouses along the north side of the square, which are visible through the trees on the right.  However, the less fashionable neighborhoods around Washington Square attracted newly arrived immigrants who worked in the factories and sweatshops nearby and also artists (including Glackens) who were drawn to the bohemian lifestyle of the district. When Glackens painted this scene of the parade celebrating Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, Italian-Americans formed the largest immigrant population in Manhattan. Columbus became a role model for many ethnic and religious groups, and Glackens suggests the international flavor of the celebration by painting a variety of flags visible through Washington Square Arch. The juxtaposition of the Old World and the New is further enhanced by the prominence of the Italian and American flags standing side by side in the lower foreground. The American dream of rapid transformation from immigrant to respected community leader is suggested by the modestly dressed onlookers who observe both the decorated men in top hats seated under the arch and those successful citizens spirited away above the throng in a carriage. Rendered with lively brushwork to enhance the festive and breezy atmosphere, the composition presents a distinctly American spectacle of Italian-American revelers and their pride of place in the urban scene. This text was adapted from Davis, et al., MFA Highlights: American Painting (Boston, 2003) available at www.mfashop.com/mfa-publications.html. Provenance: The artist; to Ira Glackens, New York, his son, upon the artist's death, 1938; with Kraushaar Galleries, New York, by 1949; to Joseph Katz, Baltimore, 1957; with Hirschl and Adler, New York, by 1959; to MFA, 1959, purchase.

What is going on in this image? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Title: Ellis Island--April 8, 1908 Date: 1911 By: Lewis W. Hine American, 1874–1940 Object Number: 1980.306 Dimensions: 12.1 x 17 cm (4 3/4 x 6 11/16 in.) Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print Credit Line: Gift of Naomi and Walter Rosenblum Place Depicted: United States, New York City Descriptions: (Group of immigrants having just entered from boat)   Provenance: Walter and Naomi Rosenblum, Long Island City, NY; gift to MFA September 1980.

What is going on in this image? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? Title: A Madonna of the Tenements Date: 1904 By: Lewis W. Hine American, 1874–1940 Object Number: 1981.34 Status: Not On View Dimensions: Image (round, diameter): 10 cm (3 15/16 in.) Sheet: 17.8 x 12.7 cm (7 x 5 in.) Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print Credit Line: A. Shuman Collection—Abraham Shuman Fund Provenance: Stephen T. Rose, Boston; purchased February 1981.

What is going on in this image? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can we find? "Émigrants" (1880) By: James Jacques Joseph Tissot French, 1836–1902 Object Number: M23433