This June, SJMA joins many other partner organizations and the Welcome.us campaign for the First-Annual Immigrant Heritage Month (IHM). IHM celebrates our country’s history and its future by telling the story of how immigrants first felt welcomed to the American experience. IHM is a part of the Welcome.us campaign, an organization created to help highlight how our country’s heritage is shaped ultimately by the immigrant experience.   

This summer, SJMA is exhibiting many works by American artists who immigrated to the United States from other countries. Artists Judy Pfaff (born in London), Stephanie Syjuco (born in the Phillipines), and Xiaoze Xie (born in China), are represented in the exhibition Initial Public Offering: New Works from SJMA’s Collection. The exhibition Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection, which is on loan to SJMA from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, features works by Willem de Kooning (born in the Netherlands), Agnes Martin (bon in Canada), and Felix-Gonzales Torres (born in Cuba). Others, among them some of the greatest names in American postwar art, are second-generation immigrants: Richard Artschwager (Prussia, Ukraine), John Baldessari (Austria, Denmark); Joseph Kosuth (Hungary); and Andy Warhol (Slovakia). 

For more information about Immigrant Heritage Month activities nationwide, visit Welcome.us.