Susan Ricker Knox’s Ellis Island Paintings
June is “Immigrant Heritage Month.” Throughout the month we will be posting materials relating to immigration and immigrant cultures of NYC.
One hundred years ago today … The Ellis Island paintings by Susan Ricker Knox were on display at the Clergy Club of New York, 200 5th Avenue.
Susan Ricker Knox, “The Lonely Refugee” (1921). Courtesy Blue Heron Gallery. Caption: “Czech in center, Italians, jews, figures in background, going to America.”
Knox had been inspired to create the series after attending a 1920 Xmas concert on Ellis Island. The paintings were first exhibited “in the Committee Room at the House of Representatives in Washington in 1921 while Congress was debating establishing quotas and restricting immigration to the United States” (Child and Kauffman). (See our June 3rd post about the 1921 immigration restrictions.)
Susan Ricker Knox, “Ellis Island” (1921). Courtesy Mutual Art. “
The exhibition was intended to arouse sympathy for the recent waves of immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe, especially Jews, the very populations that the Emergency Quota Act was aimed to restrict. From the Tribune, one hundred years ago today:
The Clergy Club of New York has issued 1,500 invitations to local churchmen of various denominations to attend an exhibition of paintings designed to help them visualize problems attending immigration, which are said to have arisen here in the last year.
The paintings are by Susan Ricker Knox from first hand observations at Ellis Island during the recent heavy influx of peoples from southeastern Europe. They are hung at the club rooms, 200 Fifth Avenue, and may be seen free each day this week from 10 until 6 o'clock and evenings from 8 until 10 o'clock,
The problem in which the club, through the instrumentality of Dr Walter Laidlaw, the registrar, wishes to interest the various churches has to do with the new class of immigrant. The fact that recent years have seen an increase in immigration from southeastern Europe, whereas there has been a decrease in the arrival of peoples from northwestern Europe, Clergy Club officials said, was borne out by government statistics. This shift has brought to us peoples of greater illiteracy, it was said, and peoples who are in more need of the influence that the church can offer them.
The paintings of Miss Knox depict forcibly the situations, sometimes of real tragedy, which these people have to meet on arrival here. The types predominating are from Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Italy, Armenia and Spain.
(“Art Exhibit Visualizes Problems of Immigrant–Clergy Club Invites Churchmen to View Paintings by Susan Ricker Knox.” New York Tribune, 14 June 1921, p.9.)
Courtesy Invaluable.
References / Further reading
Child, Deborah M. and Jane D. Kaufman. “Susan Ricker Knox (1874 - 1959).”
– Jonathan Goldman, June 14, 1921
TAGS: paintings, visual art, women artists, modernism, post-impressionism, immigration, refugees, quotas