Analysis Of The Smithsonian's National Museum Of American History

The collection “Coming to America” is comprised of journal entries, biographies, and autobiographies that discuss the social and political transformations that arose from immigration. “Of Plymouth Plantation”, “Balboa”, and “‘Blaxicans’ and Other Reinvented Americans” illustrate how immigrants shape America’s direction. The changes that occurred when settlers migrated seriously impacted the nation they were travelling to. The first of these changes pertains to culture. Immigrants brought their religions and languages to their host country, and that caused a great deal of acculturation, usually to the new religion or language. Government is another principle that was implemented into the “inner workings” of the new country. Lastly, the newcomers

The walls vibrated with colors and the strokes of pencil danced across the pages. Twist and turns of materials displayed in tall glasses cases for all eyes to see. The exhibit for all to see especially the students interested in learning additional information about Latino background. This is how I felt as I walked through Musel del Barrio. I was quite excited to go to the Museo del Barrio because it was one of the museums in New York City that I have not been to. During this semester, my interest in the Nuyorican movement has grown. I was interested in learning more about the movements and the impact the museum had on the community.

It must have been 13 years or so since I have been to the art museum, back in elementary school, on a one of a kind field trip. 13 years is way too long to have been away from the art museum, as my experience this year reminded me that. It was a beautiful, sunny October day, although it felt like July, and it was an even better day to talk a walk through the vast, mesmerizing pieces of art that the museum has to offer. The North Carolina Museum of Art provides an abundance of artwork from various time periods, cultures, and one can find art anywhere from Egyptian, to classical, to modern and contemporary art. The artwork that the museum provides not only displays an abundance of artwork, but

Since the dawn of American colonization in the early 1600s, the notion of immigrating to America has long been instilled upon various people as a stimulating opportunity to begin a fresh chapter in their lives. Even now, this possibility has brought many variations of people to America, culminating a society that brims with dreams and aspirations to form the diversified nation of today. When speaking of the current state of immigration, it is easy to conclude that immigration is heavily discussed from political standpoints. Though this current condition is composed of highly controversial perspectives, many of the early-century viewpoints found in literature genuinely embrace reality, for these writers were indeed immigrants themselves, thus adding an authoritative standpoint over immigration. The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921) by Edward Bok and The America I Believe In by Colin Powell, display the perspectives of two authors, who have lived as immigrants, through their own personal anecdotes. Both Edward Bok and Colin Powell convey a sincerely grateful tone and develop the idea of Americanization and the quest for opportunity through the use of connotative diction in contrast to the Immigration Chart and Political Cartoon which have a downright concrete and pessimistic tone and supports the idea that immigration exposes various challenges to incoming immigrants.

Through interviewing my roommate Linda Wang, I have gotten the opportunity of hearing a first-hand account of what it is like being a young immigrant living in the United States. At the age of eight, Linda, along with her father, mother, and aunt, emigrated to America. Linda’s family currently resides in Bayside, Queens and she is a student-athlete on the St. John’s women’s golf team. Linda was kind enough to share her immigration story with me so that I may use it as a manifestation of what life as an immigrant, and the immigration process itself, entails.

In the United States, the cliché of a nation of immigrants is often invoked. Indeed, very few Americans can trace their ancestry to what is now the United States, and the origins of its immigrants have changed many times in American history. Despite the identity of an immigrant nation, changes in the origins of immigrants have often been met with resistance. What began with white, western European settlers fleeing religious persecution morphed into a multicultural nation as immigrants from countries across the globe came to the U.S. in increasing numbers. Like the colonial immigrants before them, these new immigrants sailed to the Americas to gain freedom, flee poverty and

This essay will focus primarily on the immigrants and their struggles faced in America. As it has been noted, many immigrants who come to America seek economic opportunity. Their goals of advancing and becoming successful at times can be over turned by discrimination. As seen in the essay from literature reviews and intensive interviews, the struggles faced by American immigrants are discovered. However, the goal is to explore the various acts of discriminations and look at how some immigrants have preserved.

Immigration makes up of the United States. The life of an immigrant faces many struggles. Coming to the United States is a very difficult time for immigrant, especially when English is not their first language. In Oscar Handlin’s essay, Uprooted and Trapped: The One-Way Route to Modernity and Mark Wyman’s Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, both these essays describes the life of immigrants living in America and how they are able to make a decent amount of money to support their families. Handlin’s essay Uprooted and Trapped: The One - Way Route to Modernity explains how unskilled immigrants came to adapt to the American life working in factories to make a living. In the essay, Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, this essay describes the reality of many immigrants migrating to the United States in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many were living and adjusting to being transnational families. Both these essays show how the influx of immigration and industrialization contributed to the making of the United States. With the support from documents 3 and 7, Thomas O’ Donnell, Immigrant Thomas O’Donnell Laments the Worker’s Plight, 1883 and A Slovenian Boy Remembers Tales of the Golden Country, 1909, these documents will explain the life of an immigrant worker in the United States. Although, the United States was portrayed as the country for a better life and a new beginning, in reality, the United

Without a doubt, The Hispanic Society of America is a museum where the artwork does not show Hispanic people fighting, but instead, it shows a healthy image. A visitor of the museum said, in a 2016 article that “one feels transported to another time and another place.” This shows that when you are in the museum, you can concentrate, and feel peaceful. You can feel what the paintings are trying to communicate in the most comfortable way possible.

According to Kaufman, the author of the Park Service’s Cultural Needs Assessment Report, one of the quickest ways and most economical way of creating new historic places that acknowledge Latino- American historic places is to acknowledge the groups’ role at existing historic places (Kaufman 40). Some proposed examples are to recognize “leaders and intellectual of Latin American independence movements who came to Philadelphia during the early nineteenth century, inspired by city’s contribution to the cause of liberty” and at Faneuil Hall in Boston “hosted important demonstrations against the Spanish-American war” (Kaufman 40). Independence National Historic Park still does not regularly include the Latin American independence movement in their interpretation. However, these stories are slowly making their way to the surface. In contrast to the interpretation in Independence Hall, Independence National Historic Park chose to include how the Liberty Bell is a symbol of freedom for many groups in the United States from African-Americans seeking to abolish slavery to Suffragettes seeking universal voting rights to international groups in the Liberty Bell pavilions

Immigration has been a central theme in the development of the United States. The influx of foreigners into the country has been met with acceptance and restrictive policy since its formation. The reaction to diverse immigration created exclusionary policies first introduced in the late nineteenth century and held in place by national origins quotas until 1965. The purpose of this historiography is to show how recent scholarship on immigration has developed and changed in the last fifteen years. This historiography is divided into three types of studies. The first is focused on how historians have extricated the individual from the broad historiography to give voice to specific ethnic groups as they negotiated for a place in the country.

Imagine living in the 1920s. What was society like? If asked, most people would say that they could visualize flappers, extravagant parties, fast cars, jazzy music, and the wild youth. This decade is often described as boisterous. In this time period, society was social and dramatic. It also contained numerous changes in America’s politics and important historical events. One important change in politics was immigration. Immigration is the movement of people to a country where there is not natives or where the immigrants do not possess citizenship. In today’s civilization, people are commonly questioned about their heritage through census surveys, job questionnaires, school surveys, and when admitted into hospitals. Frequently, people are questioned about their heritage. If people were to research their heritage, it is possible to discover their ancestors were immigrants to America at one time. After researching immigration, books and journal databases have broadened the information on immigration in the 1920s. Through the careful study of immigration, facts and statistics reveal the history of immigration leading up to the 1920s, the impact immigration had on America, the problems caused by immigration, the control of immigration through the quota system, and the rise in illegal immigration throughout America.

I hope to see museums make more concerted efforts to educate the public. Too many exhibits are of the “passive, didactic looking” than like the engaging Object Stories program (Dartt, Murawski). Exhibits should seek to tell untold narratives, and programs should be places of communication and cross-cultural encounters. For too long, difficult confrontations have been avoided, both inside the museum, and by dominant communities

Throughout the history, immigration and the United States are inextricably linked. The United States has promulgated many immigration legislations in the past either to restrict or support the immigration. Immigration is still going on and it is a debatable issue even today. In the interview, Chang-rae Lee says, “I’m interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate-with all the attendant problems and complications and delight”(Garner 2). Chang-rae Lee exposes the inner and outer conflicts the immigrants go through in the United States with

Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.