New Kids in Class exhibited at Smithsonian American Art Museum: SAAM Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art, Washington, DC

SAAM:

New Kids in Class reflects Pacita Abad's experience teaching art in DC public schools, including Oyster Bilingual School, Thompson Elementary School, and Savoy Elementary School, from 1986 to 1994.

An immigrant from the Philippines, she was fascinated by the mix of people from around the world found in DC classrooms, and by how cultures interact with and transform one another in the United States.

Abad sought to make visible "the American immigration experience of people of color," illustrating the hopes, opportunities, and struggles of those arriving from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The colorful stitchwork and applied lace, beads, and buttons in New Kids in Class echoes the artist's vision of US society as "a fabric of nationalities that combines many threads of all sizes and colors."?

New Kids in Class is a permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.