Dr. Bryan Zygmont


About Dr. Bryan Zygmont

Dr. Bryan J. Zygmont is Contributing Editor for American Art. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland in 2006. He is currently Professor of Art History and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Louisiana Tech University. Zygmont is the author of Portraiture and Politics in New York City, 1790-1825: Gilbert Stuart, John Vanderlyn, John Trumbull, and John Welsey Jarvis, a book he partially wrote while a Visiting Scholar at the National Portrait Gallery. Zygmont was a Fulbright Scholar in 2013.






Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (sculptor), Gustave Eiffel (interior structure), Richard Morris Hunt (base), Statue of Liberty, begun 1875, dedicated 1886, copper exterior, 151 feet 1 inch / 46 m high (statue), New York Harbor
Over the past 250 years, the American colonies have transitioned from being mere holdings of European superpowers, to being perhaps the most preeminent superpower of our own day.

America in the World



Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study for the United States Capitol), 1861, oil on canvas, 33-1/4 x 43-3/8 inches (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Americans looked to define the nation’s identity, independence, and their ideals in the nineteenth century.

1800–1848




Robert W. Weir, Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1844, oil on canvas, 548 cm x 365 cm (U.S. Capitol)
With the seventeenth century came European settlers, slavery in America, and tensions between British and French forces.

1607–1754