- 40,000 Hungarians who fled the Soviet tanks after 1956 (including the young Andy Grove who became the CEO of Intel Corporation
- Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing Castro's repression after 1959 (including a young Gloria Estefan)
- 750,000 Soviet Jews fleeing persecution by Soviet despots (including a young Sergei Brin)
- Over 1 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians after the fall of Saigon
- Hundreds of thousands of Iranians after the Khomeini revolution
- In excess of 100,000 Iraquis since the fall of Saddam Hussein
- Over 100,000 Burmese.
According to Stephens, a total of 3 million refugees have been accepted into the US since the Refugee Act of 1980 and "by almost any metric, America's refugees tend to succeed, or at least their children do. Whatever they do to enrich themselves, they enrich the country a great deal more."
In light of the foregoing, and the "ennoblement" that accrues to the US as a result of opening its doors to the displaced, the actions of the current administration renders this a "moment of unique shame for the United States" according to Stephens. The number of refugees has plunged from 97,000 in 2016 to 23,000 in 2018 with plans to potentially bring the number down to zero.
But the US is not the only major country to be moving in this direction. According to an article in today's New York Times (Patrick Kingsley, Is Trump's America Tougher on Asylum Than Other Western Countries?), "Mr. Trump's plan is also in keeping with a wider international trend of curtailing the right to asylum, as western nations try to curb migration from the global south, where the overwhelming majority of displaced people live." Mr. Kingsley then goes on to detail actions that have been taken by the EU, Australia, and Israel to limit refugee flows.
It is within this context that The Phillips Collection has organized an exhibition titled The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement. This exhibition, spread over three floors of the Goh Annex and Sant Building of the Phillips Collection premises at 1600 21st Street NW, Washington, DC.,
... brings together works of art from five continents to consider the current mass movement of people globally alongside historical migrations to and within the United States. Through sculpture, video, painting, photographs, and more, the exhibition poses urgent questions about representation and experience of migration and dislocation. The artists bear witness to both personal and historical events, many also questioning the capacity of images to portray reality and truth.
Material on the first floor of the exhibition focused primarily on providing context for the exhibition plus two pieces focused o North America and the Mediterranean Sea.
There are two striking exhibits on platforms located alongside the stairway leading between the first and second floors. The items, which, at first sight, appear to be a jumble of blown glass and disparate ephemera, are representations of typical street hawkers of African cities. "These 'rescuers' are known for recycling salvaged goods to sell and are thought to 'save' their customers with their resale services. This particular savior is a passport seller, a welcomed figure of luck for desperate migrants."
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| Sauveteur (Passport Vendor 1), 2011 Pascale Marthine Tayou |
The multimedia installations on the second floor focus on migrations and displaced persons in countries outside the US ranging from a group of Syrian refugees in the port of Lesbos, to a map of a refugee camp in Lebanon, to a Chinese artist's plaintive cry for his mother who had remained behind in China.
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| Queen Mary II, La mère (The Mother), 2007 Adel Abdessemed |
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| Refugees 4, 2015 Liu Xiaodong |
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| Mémorial aux Réfugiés Noyés (Memorial for Drowned Refugees), 2016 Meschac Gaba |
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| Ville de Calais, 2015 - 16 Henk Wildschut |
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| Shabriha 1, 2001 Marwan Rechmaoui |
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| Where is my Mother, 1926 Yun Gee |
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| Maine Family, c. 1922 - 23 Yasuo Kuniyoshi |
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| Liberty, N.Y., 2001 Zoe Leonard |
The pieces on the third floor switch to a focus on migration in North America: from the wall on the Southern border and how it has split families apart; to the Trail of Tears, the forcible displacement of Native Americans from their southeastern homelands in the 1830s; to the migration of blacks from the South to the North beginning at the turn of the 20th century. The latter movement is captured in Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series (1940 - 41), a 60-panel set, 30 of which are owned by The Phillips Collection and are displayed in this exhibition.
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| MOIA's NYC Women's Cabinet, 2016 Aliza Nisenbaum |
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| The Wall (Component), 2015 - 2016 Griselda San Martin |
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| Miguel & Christian, 2017 John Sonsini |
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| Untitled, 1941 Diego Rivera |
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| Traveling (Lead Kindly Light), 1918 William Edouard Scott |
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| The Migration Series, 1940 - 41 Jacob Lawrence |
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| Trail of Tears, 2005 Benny Andrews |
This exhibition is thought-provoking and causes self-reflection on the part of the viewer. In today's environment, when being born in the Southern Hemisphere increases the likelihood of one being a refugee, thoughts run to what actions are available to us, the more fortunate. It caused me to look, contemplatively, at the potential for this situation to become even more dire in the future given the potential for climate-driven refugee flows.
This exhibition does not dwell on the whys of migration or offer any solutions going forward; but that is not its stated intent. Rather it seeks to inform and place the viewer within the minds and experiences of the refugee/displaced person. And it causes us to think about our shared humanity,
©EverythingElse238
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