Arrivals call forth origin stories. How did we get here? Where did we come from? Americans have remarkably varied stories to share, having come to call this country home in so many different ways: by conquest, displacement, colonialism, the slave trade, voluntary migration, and more.
The exhibition is organized around a series of "arrival moments" —Columbus, the Middle Passage, the Mayflower, Ellis Island / Angel Island, WW2, 1965, and Today—in order to explore some of the myths and origin stories that have shaped American identity. ARRIVALS asks how artists over several centuries have helped to construct these stories, disrupt or challenge them, how they have navigated their own arrival stories, and how they are imagining new kinds of stories to tell in future.
Curated by Heather Ewing, ARRIVALS looks at how artists over time have explored some of the myths and narratives around what it means to be American and features more than 50 works spanning the 16th century to the present. Some of the 50+ artists represented include Hannelore Baron, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Enrique Chagoya, Willie Cole, vanessa german, Mohamad Hafez, Dorothea Lange, Titus Kaphar, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Faith Ringgold, Ben Shahn, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Saul Steinberg, Stephanie Syjuco, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, and N.C. Wyeth.
Their works offer a multiplicity of perspectives on signal moments of arrival, confronting ideas of belonging, othering, storytelling, the memory of ancestors, displacement, race, resilience and perseverance. They shed light on the different ways that the country has responded to societal change and changing demographics, and on the variety of strategies that artists have employed as they grapple with the myths and complexities of America’s most cherished ideals.
