Teaching Packet

Immigration and Displacement

Part of Uncovering America

Grade Level

Subject

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On this Page:

  1. Overview
  2. Selected Works
  3. Activity: Unearthing Stories
  4. Activity: Charting Journeys
  5. Activity: American Dream
  6. Additional Resources
Printed with tones of black, gray, and smoky gray, two oversized hands reach out of an ocean and hold up a masted ship in this horizontal etching, aquatint, and drypoint. Closer to us, the black silhouette of a woman sinks under the surface of the water, face down with her arms thrust back and her mouth gaping open. Her features are exaggeratedly rounded to reference stereotypes historically connected with Black and African people. The wave surges to our left, and the giant hands lift the boat just left of center of the composition. Small in scale, two silhouetted people stand on a flat area to the left. One wears a brimmed, flat-topped hat, a coat with tails, and holds up a tool, perhaps a hoe. The other wears a spiky headdress and skirt and holds up a stalk of sugar cane. The sky is pale gray to either side of a plume of white and a black void with jagged edges, which spreads like a seeping stain down the middle of the sky. Under the image and across the bottom of the page, the artist wrote “A.P. VI/VIII” to the left and “KW 2010” to the right lightly in graphite.
Kara Walker, Greg Burnet, Burnet Editions Master Printers, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., no world, 2010, color etching, drypoint, and aquatint with sugarlift and spitbite on Hahnemühle Copperplate wove paper, Donald and Nancy de Laski Fund, 2015.42.1

Overview

Why do people migrate to and within the United States?

How might works of art help us understand personal experiences of immigration and displacement?

The United States is frequently described as a “nation of immigrants.” Immigrants have played a pivotal role in the country’s history and understanding of itself. Today, more than 40 million immigrants live in the United States. In fact, more immigrants reside in the United States than in any other country, resulting in an abundant diversity of cultures and ethnicities.

Some of these people came to the United States voluntarily, seeking a better life for themselves and their families, as pictured in Bernarda Bryson’s 30,000,000 Immigrants print. Others were forced to migrate, including hundreds of thousands of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the country. Kara Walker’s no world explores this history. The vast majority of the country’s current citizens are descendants of these two groups of people, but they’re not the only ones who live in the United States. Millions of Native Americans also experienced involuntary migration and death as other immigrants arrived. Today, millions of their descendants reside in the US.  Additionally, migration within the country has profoundly affected places, people, and communities over time.

The works of art in this module represent a wide range of views and perspectives on immigration. Some artists contemplated the experiences of their ancestors in their artwork. Other artists witnessed events or journeys connected to immigration and displacement. Many artists were immigrants themselves and chose to reflect upon and share their personal stories through the process of making their art. What can we learn from these works of art?

Selected Works

  • A group of three adults and four children are gathered on and around a couch in an interior space that opens out to a distant hilly landscape in this horizontal portrait painting. All seven people have pale skin and are clustered across the middle of the composition. To our left, an older man wearing a white wig, white cravat, and black jacket sits facing us as he holds a squirming baby on his lap. The man’s slightly tanned face is turned to gaze to our right with pale blue eyes under thick brown eyebrows. Jowls line his jaw around pursed lips. The child in his lap twists to look up at him. She holds up her pudgy arms, grasping a gold-colored rattle with bells in her left hand. She has blond hair, smooth skin, and rose-red lips, and she wears a long white gown with a petal-pink sash around the waist. Behind this pair a younger man stands with his body angled to our right in profile as he turns his face to look at us from the corners of his eyes, with a faint smile on his closed pink lips. He also wears a white cravat and black jacket, but his hair is dove gray. His forearms rest on a low, olive-green stone column in front of him, his hands crossed at the wrist as he holds papers in his right hand. To our right and at the center of the group, a young girl stands facing us with her arms crossed at her waist. A lacy, ivory cap frames tawny brown bangs that sweep across her forehead. Her petite nose, brown eyes, and rose-red lips are set within her round face. She wears an ivory-white gown belted with a sash that shimmers from pink to copper as it cascades down her right side, to our left. On her other side, the final trio includes a woman sitting with her arms entwined around two more small children. They sit on a cranberry-red, brocaded sofa. Her sapphire-blue gown has a voluminous skirt and is trimmed with gold stitching along its square neckline. The fabric gleams softly, suggesting silk. Her dark brown hair is piled high on her head, topped by a sheer white veil. Her body is angled toward us, but her head is turned in profile to our left, bowing to almost brush noses with the young child standing alongside her. Shoulder-length brown hair falls to the child’s shoulders as the head is tipped back to gaze at the woman with a wide smile. One arm reaches up and embraces the woman’s neck and the other rests on her knee. The child wears a butter-yellow gown with a white sash around the waist. The fourth and final child lies belly down across the red and copper bolster cushion of the couch so her elbows are propped on her mother’s lap. The child turns her head back to look at us with dark eyes and slight smile on her pale pink lips. Her blond hair falls down the back of her white gown, which is belted with a gold sash. A child’s doll and hat with a rounded crown, a narrow brim, and an indigo-blue feather rests in folds of the curtain on the floral-patterned carpet near the lower left corner of the painting. The scene is framed by rust-red drapery edged in gold hanging from the upper left. In the landscape seen through an opening behind the family, hills fade from sage green to slate blue, and they become more faint as they recede to the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up this composition. The opening is framed with a flowering vine climbing the wall behind the woman.
  • A horizontal oval is divided vertically into two portraits to show the same brown-skinned man twice, once wearing Assiniboine tribal attire and once wearing a dark, military-style suit in this painting. In both portraits, the man has dark eyes and brows, high cheekbones, and a sloping nose. Straight black hair hangs around his face and down his back, and he wears red, blue, or white earrings from multiple piercings on his ear lobes. Both stand in landscapes with pale green trees and grass under ice-blue skies, and there are buildings in the distance of each. To our left, the man stands facing our left in profile, wearing tribal attire. There, his eyes are open wide, his lips are in a straight line, and there is a stripe of red along his lower jaw. The cascade of white and black feathers on his headdress disappears behind his lower back. He wears a tan leather tunic with leather leggings and beaded shoes. Medallions on his chest and a band down the sleeve and side of the pant leg we see are decorated in tones of tangerine orange, celery green, and harvest yellow. Fringe hangs from his sleeves and the front of his tunic. A sable-brown pelt or blanket hangs over his far shoulder and trails behind his feet, which are at the edge of a curving path leading into the distance. He holds a long pipe by his side in the hand we can see. In the distance behind him is a silvery-white domed building with rows of windows. A faint vertical line separates the man to our left from his counterpart to our right. There, he stands with his back to us with his face turned to our right in profile. His eyes are narrowed, and his lips are pursed around a cigarette. He wears an oyster-white top hat. His nearly knee-length black overcoat has gold epaulets on the shoulders and a gold-trimmed high collar. He has black pants, black shoes with pointed toes, and a wide red belt. Also around his waist, a leather band holds a curved gold sword hilt and scabbard so it hangs from long straps between his legs, the tip nearly brushing the ground. Dark glass bottles peek out of pockets on the back of his coat. In white-gloved hands, he holds up and gazes at a partially open saffron-orange fan in his right hand, and he holds a folded black umbrella in his other, leaning on it like a cane. In the landscape beyond him, several people stand in front of pale brown, cone-shaped tents. Brownish haze hangs over the horizon to our right. The oval is surrounded by borders of fawn brown and then black. The card paper on which this is painted is tawny brown around the oval. That paper is mounted on an olive-green paperboard. A slip of paper attached to the green board at the top center reads “83.” The lower left corner of the brown paper is inscribed in ink with an “A” over a dash, and then “126” below. In the green border below the portraits, the artist wrote a lowercase “a” to our left and “b” to our right.
  • Two cows stand side-by-side to our right with a path leading to a row of buildings in the distance to our left in this dreamlike, stylized landscape painting. The forms are simplified, angular, and blocky, and seem to be overlapping, though most of the shapes painted with blended strokes. To our right, a black cow stands beyond a brown cow, both facing our left in profile. The heads are triangular and come to exaggerated points under curving horns, and the ribs of the cow closer to us are painted with curving black lines down the body. Their legs also taper to exaggeratedly pointed, tiny hooves. A milk jug sits to our right, behind them. The row of five buildings to our left are created with blocks of white, golden yellow, brick red, and black. A sprig of leaves and a lacy white flower grow to our left on the row of oatmeal-brown rocks jutting up along the bottom edge of the composition. An abstracted shirt-like form floats to our left against the background of teal green that covers the bottom two-thirds of the painting. The area above the buildings is painted with a field of silvery charcoal gray. The artist signed and dated the painting with tiny letters under the brown cow: "Y. Kuniyoshi 23."
  • A young boy with pink and tan-colored skin stands next to a seated woman with an ashen white face, and both look out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is created with broad areas of mottled color in rust and coral red, pale pink, lilac purple, ivory white, and shades of tawny brown. The eyes of both people are heavily outlined with large, dark pupils. To our right, the woman’s pale, oval face is surrounded by a muted, mint-green cloth that covers her hair and wraps across her neck. Her eyes are outlined with charcoal gray, and her heavy lids shaded under arched brows with smoky, plum purple. She has a straight nose, and her burgundy-red lips are closed in a straight line. Her long, rose-pink dress is lavender purple below the knee, and is scrubbed with darker pink strokes across her lap. Her sleeves are tan on the upper arms and cream white on the forearm, over two blush-pink forms that represent her hands resting on her thighs. Along the top of her shoulders, her dress is terracotta red. A rectangular, fog-gray form behind her could be a chair or a half-wall, the top edge of which is higher to our right of her head. To our left, the boy has dark brown, short hair over putty pink, protruding ears. The area between his eyelid and arched brow is filled in with chocolate brown, giving his staring eyes a hooded look. His jawline, chin, and lips are outlined with dark brown. His khaki-brown, knee-length coat has pale, rose-pink sleeves and a black collar. An area of pale, ice blue could be a kerchief or high-collared shirt, and he wears fawn-brown pants. One of his slippers is coffee brown and the other, closer to the woman, is slate gray. He holds a loosely painted, pale, turquoise-blue object in one hand at his waist. The pair are situated against a background painted in areas of coral, ruby, crimson, and wine red. Two vertical, concrete-gray strips behind the boy and woman could be columns. The floor along the bottom edge of the painting is pale pink.
  • Rectangles and bands of saturated colors are stacked agasint a golden yellow field in this abstract, vertical painting. About a quarter of the way down the composition a thin strip of vibrant orange rests on a thicker, wider band of deep plum purple, which almost spans the width of the canvas. Just below and as wide as the purple band, the largest, velvety black rectangle takes up at least a third of the composition. A narrower rectangular area below was painted with copper green over rusty orange. The edges of all of the forms are soft and blended.
  • Made with mostly square or rectangular pieces of patterned paper in shades of asparagus and moss green, sky blue, tan, and ash brown, a man with brown skin sits in the center of this horizontal composition with a second person over his shoulder, in the upper left corner of this collage. The man’s facial features are a composite of cut-outs, mostly in shades of brown and gray, as if from black-and white photographs, and he smokes a cigarette. He sits with his body angled slightly to our right and he looks off in that direction, elbows resting on thighs and wrists crossed. His button-down shirt and pants, similarly collaged, are mottled with sky blue and white. One foot, on our right, is created with a cartoonish, shoe-shaped, black silhouette. The paper used for the other foot seems to have been scraped and scratched, creating the impression that that foot is bare. A tub, made of the same blue and white paper of the man’s suit, sits on the ground to our left, in the lower corner. The man sits in front of an expanse made up of green and brown pieces of paper patterned with wood grain, which could be a cabin. In a window in the upper left, a woman’s face, her features similarly collaged, looks out at us. One dark hand, large in relation to the people, rests on the sill with the fingers extended down the side of the house. The right third of the composition is filled collaged scraps of paper patterned to resemble leafy trees. Closer inspection reveals the form of a woman, smaller in scale than the other two, standing in that zone, facing our left in profile near a gray picket fence. She has a brown face, her hair wrapped in a patterned covering, and she holds a watermelon-sized, yellow fruit with brown stripes. Several blue birds and a red-winged blackbird fly and stand nearby. Above the woman and near the top of the composition, a train puffs along the top of what we read as the tops of trees. The artist signed the work in black letters in the upper right corner: “romare bearden.”
  • Printed with mostly geometric shapes in vibrant, flat colors, this stylized horizontal screenprint shows buildings lining a harbor across from us, with a sailboat entering the scene from our right. The top quarter of this print has a band of pale turquoise clouds against a vibrant cobalt-blue sky. The buildings on the shore across from us are mostly nickel or slate gray with black squares and rectangles for windows and doors. A few of the buildings are white and two are hot pink. One arched, sunshine yellow form at the center of the composition could be an opening or a domed roof. One gray building, in front of the yellow, has a band and roof picked out with glittery gold. Several palm trees grow atop the spring-green hills beyond the buildings. A band of caramel brown near the water could be a sandy beach. Lumpy brown forms could be rocks in the water near the shore. The waterway is celestial blue with a few bands in grape purple, light gray, spring green, and turquoise. Billowing white sails pull the boat into the image. A person silhouetted in black holds a shield and spear at the bow. Three long black sticks with white arrows at the end, perhaps more spears or paddles, protrude from the front of the ship, and the side is decorated with several shield-sized panels. The artist signed the paper in the margin under the bottom right corner of the printed image, "Romare Bearden," and numbered the lower left corner, "65/125."
  • Printed with tones of black, gray, and smoky gray, two oversized hands reach out of an ocean and hold up a masted ship in this horizontal etching, aquatint, and drypoint. Closer to us, the black silhouette of a woman sinks under the surface of the water, face down with her arms thrust back and her mouth gaping open. Her features are exaggeratedly rounded to reference stereotypes historically connected with Black and African people. The wave surges to our left, and the giant hands lift the boat just left of center of the composition. Small in scale, two silhouetted people stand on a flat area to the left. One wears a brimmed, flat-topped hat, a coat with tails, and holds up a tool, perhaps a hoe. The other wears a spiky headdress and skirt and holds up a stalk of sugar cane. The sky is pale gray to either side of a plume of white and a black void with jagged edges, which spreads like a seeping stain down the middle of the sky. Under the image and across the bottom of the page, the artist wrote “A.P. VI/VIII” to the left and “KW 2010” to the right lightly in graphite.

Activity: Unearthing Stories

Binh Danh, Ghost of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum #1, 2008, daguerreotype, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2012.43.1

Select a work of art from this module, such as Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother, Binh Danh’s Ghost of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum #1, or John Singleton Copley’s The Copley Family. Using an adaptation of The Story Routine created by Ron Ritchhart of Harvard University’s Project Zero, identify the following:

                What’s the main or central story of this work of art?

                What’s the side story (or stories) of this work of art? You might consider what’s happening on the periphery and in the background, or how the artwork was made.

                What’s the hidden story of this work of art? What’s obscured, neglected, or happening below the surface that isn’t easily seen?

Try discussing the work of art as a group to determine the main and side stories. Student wonderings can serve as guideposts for uncovering hidden stories through additional research. Where do journeying and migration fit into the stories you discover?

Activity: Charting Journeys

Made with mostly square or rectangular pieces of patterned paper in shades of asparagus and moss green, sky blue, tan, and ash brown, a man with brown skin sits in the center of this horizontal composition with a second person over his shoulder, in the upper left corner of this collage. The man’s facial features are a composite of cut-outs, mostly in shades of brown and gray, as if from black-and white photographs, and he smokes a cigarette. He sits with his body angled slightly to our right and he looks off in that direction, elbows resting on thighs and wrists crossed. His button-down shirt and pants, similarly collaged, are mottled with sky blue and white. One foot, on our right, is created with a cartoonish, shoe-shaped, black silhouette. The paper used for the other foot seems to have been scraped and scratched, creating the impression that that foot is bare. A tub, made of the same blue and white paper of the man’s suit, sits on the ground to our left, in the lower corner. The man sits in front of an expanse made up of green and brown pieces of paper patterned with wood grain, which could be a cabin. In a window in the upper left, a woman’s face, her features similarly collaged, looks out at us. One dark hand, large in relation to the people, rests on the sill with the fingers extended down the side of the house. The right third of the composition is filled collaged scraps of paper patterned to resemble leafy trees. Closer inspection reveals the form of a woman, smaller in scale than the other two, standing in that zone, facing our left in profile near a gray picket fence. She has a brown face, her hair wrapped in a patterned covering, and she holds a watermelon-sized, yellow fruit with brown stripes. Several blue birds and a red-winged blackbird fly and stand nearby. Above the woman and near the top of the composition, a train puffs along the top of what we read as the tops of trees. The artist signed the work in black letters in the upper right corner: “romare bearden.”
Romare Bearden, Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967, collage of various papers with charcoal, graphite and paint on paper mounted to canvas, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.72.1
Two cows stand side-by-side to our right with a path leading to a row of buildings in the distance to our left in this dreamlike, stylized landscape painting. The forms are simplified, angular, and blocky, and seem to be overlapping, though most of the shapes painted with blended strokes. To our right, a black cow stands beyond a brown cow, both facing our left in profile. The heads are triangular and come to exaggerated points under curving horns, and the ribs of the cow closer to us are painted with curving black lines down the body. Their legs also taper to exaggeratedly pointed, tiny hooves. A milk jug sits to our right, behind them. The row of five buildings to our left are created with blocks of white, golden yellow, brick red, and black. A sprig of leaves and a lacy white flower grow to our left on the row of oatmeal-brown rocks jutting up along the bottom edge of the composition. An abstracted shirt-like form floats to our left against the background of teal green that covers the bottom two-thirds of the painting. The area above the buildings is painted with a field of silvery charcoal gray. The artist signed and dated the painting with tiny letters under the brown cow: "Y. Kuniyoshi 23."
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Cows in Pasture, 1923, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of George Biddle), 2014.136.94
Printed with tones of black, gray, and smoky gray, two oversized hands reach out of an ocean and hold up a masted ship in this horizontal etching, aquatint, and drypoint. Closer to us, the black silhouette of a woman sinks under the surface of the water, face down with her arms thrust back and her mouth gaping open. Her features are exaggeratedly rounded to reference stereotypes historically connected with Black and African people. The wave surges to our left, and the giant hands lift the boat just left of center of the composition. Small in scale, two silhouetted people stand on a flat area to the left. One wears a brimmed, flat-topped hat, a coat with tails, and holds up a tool, perhaps a hoe. The other wears a spiky headdress and skirt and holds up a stalk of sugar cane. The sky is pale gray to either side of a plume of white and a black void with jagged edges, which spreads like a seeping stain down the middle of the sky. Under the image and across the bottom of the page, the artist wrote “A.P. VI/VIII” to the left and “KW 2010” to the right lightly in graphite.
Kara Walker, Greg Burnet, Burnet Editions Master Printers, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., no world, 2010, color etching, drypoint, and aquatint with sugarlift and spitbite on Hahnemühle Copperplate wove paper, Donald and Nancy de Laski Fund, 2015.42.1

Invite small groups of students to select a work of art that features a transformational journey they’d like to investigate. The journey might be visible in the artwork, or it may be one that the artist undertook. Suggested works of art include Romare Bearden’s Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant agricultural worker’s family, Nipomo, California, Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother, Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Cows in Pasture, and Kara Walker’s no world. Next, ask students to figure out or imagine the specifics of this journey:

  • Identify the person undertaking the travels. If the journey depicted is a generalized one, ask students to identify an actual or historical person who would have experienced a similar migration.
  • Where might the journey have begun? Did it conclude?
  • Did anyone accompany them? Who did they encounter along the way?
  • Why did they make this journey? Was it their choice to travel? What costs were associated with the journey?
  • Describe the travel conditions. What form(s) of transportation did they use? How long did it take to get from one place to another? During what season did they travel?
  • How does the way in which the artist depicted the journey reflect or add to the story of that journey? Think about colors, materials, and shapes.
  • What challenges did they experience along the way? Were there any surprises or moments of delight? What emotions do you imagine they felt while traveling?
  • How might you travel this route today?
  • What is realistic or unrealistic about what is pictured? Why?

Students will likely need to learn about historical events or artist biographies to answer some of these questions. In cases where finding an answer proves difficult, ask students to put themselves in the shoes of the person traveling and use their imaginations. Encourage students to share the results of their research and thinking in creative ways, such as annotating a map, or creating a video or performance.

Activity: American Dream

Many immigrants come to the United States or move within the country seeking new opportunities and a better life—if not for themselves, then for their children. They may be driven in part by the “American Dream,” a concept or ethos which promises upward social mobility, increased wealth, and equality, as suggested in the US Declaration of Independence

What does the American Dream mean to you? Is the American Dream something you believe in or aspire to achieve personally? Do you think it’s equally available to everyone in the country, as well as prospective immigrants?

Consider the works of art in this module and select an object or figure in a work that you think best illustrates the idea of the American Dream. Can you identify an object or figure that challenges or complicates the concept?

Additional Resources

US Immigration Trends, Migration Policy Institute

Immigration Lesson Plans, Library of Congress

Second Opinion: Immigration Education Resources, Smithsonian Institution

Ten Myths about Immigration lesson unit, Teaching Tolerance

The Art of Romare Bearden Teaching Packet, National Gallery of Art

Civic Online Reasoning (Assessments for Evaluating Online Resources), Stanford History Education Group

Immigrant Stories, University of Minnesota

“City of Immigrants”: An Educational Game for Women’s History Month, National Endowment for the Humanities

On Discovering Pearl S. Buck for the Classroom, National Endowment for the Humanities

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Educational Resource:  Immigration and Displacement

The United States is frequently described as a “nation of immigrants.” Immigrants have played a pivotal role in the country’s history and understanding of itself.

A pale-skinned young woman with copper-orange hair, wearing a turquoise-blue robe, stands in a pastel-infused landscape in this stylized, vertical painting. The woman fills most of the left half of the composition. She faces our right in profile with her head bowed as she looks down at the silver and brown box she holds in her right hand, closer to us. Her body angles away from us so we see her back. Her hair is held back under a gold-colored headand, and her blue robe falls over a white skirt. Beyond her, rocky mountains in ice blue and pale lilac purple span the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up the painting, beneath a pale, rose-pink sky. An area of mottled parchment-white to our right of the person could be a field. Along the bottom edge of the canvas, rounded and organic shapes in scarlet red, turquoise, lapis blue, golden and lemon yellow, and pumpkin orange could be abstracted earth or flowers at the woman’s feet.

Educational Resource:  Pandora's Box

Educational Resource:  Uncovering America: Activism and Protest

Artists in the United States are protected under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedoms of speech and press. This module features works created by artists with a range of perspectives and motivations.