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videos + essays
Over the next two years, Seeing America will grow to include 100 videos, 18 essays, quizzes, discussion questions and lesson plans.
Dreaming big: Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream
Cole, the great American landscape painter, looks across the vast history of Western architecture
Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable
The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable, a tale in the construction of history
An African muslim among the founding fathers, Charles Willson Peale’s Yarrow Mamout
How a portrait of an African muslim came to hang side-by-side with the founding fathers in one of America's earliest museums.
Terms and Issues in Native American Art
Too many assumptions persist about Native American arts and cultures—start here to disentangle fact from fiction.
Settling the American Eden, The Oxbow
Not content to merely paint the land, Cole elevated the landscape to approach the status of historical painting.
Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York
The creation of a beloved landmark destroyed a thriving community of African Americans and Irish immigrants.
Unveiling 19th-century American values in The Greek Slave
Though at first glance this nude seems plucked from classical antiquity, it actually alludes to modern politics.
Dignity in the face of injustice: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas
This dignified portrait of a Native leader belies the cruel treatment he endured at the time of its painting.
Becoming a city: daily life in 1820, Brooklyn
This snowy image of a bygone Brooklyn is sprinkled with farm animals, townspeople... and casual racism.
When California was Spanish: Native Americans in New Spain
The artist used Spanish coins as models for the coats of arms woven into this basket in California, then New Spain.
Celebrating the spirit of American enterprise, Bargaining for a Horse
Is there a political message behind this image of two farmers settling the price of a horse?
Wilderness, settlement, and American identity
Cole feared for the American landscape as his country expanded westward.