Humanities Symposium 2020: "The American Dream": Immigrant Artists

This work explores a period in American art and culture when both were infused with a strong sense of righteousness and the certainty that the artist must celebrate nature and the deity.

Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery reflected the national character.

Famous Jewish artist Marc Chagall emigrated to NYC in 1941.

Born into near poverty in Russia in 1887, the son of a Jewish herring merchant, Chagall fled the repressive "potato-colored" tsarist empire in 1911 to Paris initially, but eventually to the United States.

Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration.

An account of popular artist, David Hockney, who describes in his own words his life and work since the mid-1970s.

A leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement, Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) is a pivotal figure in American painting who bridged European modernism and the New York School.