The story of the thousands of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island in New York during the late 19th and early 20th centuries is well-known to many, and on a visit to it, you can learn about the Jews who left eastern Europe to escape oppression, the Italians who came to the United States seeking upward mobility, the Armenians who arrived amid a genocide at home, the Syrians who crossed the Atlantic to find new lives abroad, and many more stories like this. What you cannot learn about, the artist Pacita Abad realized when she came to Ellis Island as a tourist in 1991, is the stories of the Asian, African, and Latin American immigrants who came to the U.S. Surprised by this lacuna in the history of immigration to the U.S., she knew she had to make art about it.
—Alex Greenberger
