Catherine Bancroft

Ellis Island Series - Page Four

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A country where the great majority are immigrants is different than a country where people have been living for hundreds of years…People who come to another country, who are torn from their homes, learn that things are not just as they thought; that there are different things to eat for breakfast than coffee and a roll. You can think that is human nature til you go somewhere else and eat corn flakes. - Isaac Bashevis Singer













Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world...our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world. - Herman Melville







It's a place, Ellis Island.

And it contains all of America.

Its dreams.

Its limits.

The variety of who came here. Their hopes. What they brought with them.

Cultures, languages, religions. Styles of dress, of sitting, of facial expression.

A moment in time. A cacophony of voices. Silently caught.

The procedures of the place. The values and barriers they represented.









                    Key to Paintings


Child Detained 12x12              Hungarian Farmer 12x12              Hungarian Servant 12x12     
 
Russian Widow 12x12              Irish Girl (sold) 12x12              Italian Laborer 12x12     
 
Russian Cattle Dealer 12x12              Shepherd (sold) 12x12              Irish Servant (sold) 12x12     
 
German Stowaway 12x12              Swedish Woman 12x12              Boy (sold) 12x12     
 
Playing on the Steerage Deck 18x18              Medical Exam - 1907 16x16              Nine Children from Holland 20x24             
 
Detention Dining Hall 12x12              Men on Dock (sold) 12x12              Three Scottish Sisters (sold) 12x12             
 
Two Officials Observing the Line 12x12              Women Arriving (sold) 12x12              Younger Scottish Siblings (sold) 12x12             




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