Immigration in the Age of Sail

Immigration in the Age of Sail

My first solo exhibition took place at the South Street Seaport Museum, where I learned from the best: chief curator Charles L. Sachs and designer Paul Pearson. Immigration in the Age of Sail surveyed the experiences of the 3.7 million people who left Ireland and Western Europe for New York aboard sailing ships between 1820 and 1860, before the better-known Ellis Island era.

By focusing on the business of immigration—the networks of shipping lines, ticket agents, boardinghouse keepers, and “runners” who both aided and exploited travelers—the exhibition sought to show New York’s role in the mass migrations that remade the 19th-century world and the city itself. I stumbled into one of the joys and challenges of curating: the need to create my own network of public collections and private collectors (scattered from Long Island to Minnesota, Salt Lake City, and Liverpool) who I badgered and cajoled for artifact loans and reproductions. Designed by Paul Pearson.