Stirring the Melting Pot mines the vast photography collections of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library as a lens to view the immigrant experience in New York through the faces and places photographers have captured over time. Featuring more than 100 photographs and objects, the exhibition explores how immigrants transformed the city as a whole and created communities in their new home. Among the highlights are photographs that document the impact of the 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster on one family, illustrating how the tragedy reshaped a community and city neighborhoods, as well as images spanning the 20th century that capture a vast range of immigrant life. Photographs show children at play and in school, seniors at recreational centers, workers in sweatshops and factories, families at home, and visitors to festivals and parades—all making a life for themselves after leaving places like Bosnia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Italy, Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, and Vietnam, among others. Depictions of Greek Orthodox churches, Cambodian Buddhist temples, Jewish synagogues, and Sikh temples highlight the city's diverse faiths, while images of street vendors and storefronts chart how food has played a transformative role in New York's landscape.

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