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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.
Bentwood Boxes of the Northwest Coast peoples
The body of this box is made of one piece of wood carefully bent into its four sides
Tlingit mortuary and memorial totem poles
Learn about two types of totem poles from the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest Coast that memorialize individuals who have passed
Slave Burial Ground, University of Alabama
A 2004 plaque is the only marker of burial grounds of enslaved people who died while enslaved by the University of Alabama and its faculty
The Missouri Compromise and the dangerous precedent of appeasement: American Art in Context
Historians celebrated these compromises as valiant efforts to save the union, but recently historians have questioned whether they should instead be seen as appeasements of slaveholders.
The Mexican-American War
There is no memorial to the Mexican-American War in Washington, D.C.—a war in which more than 15,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
Teaching guide
Thomas Birch, Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie
Perry's painting of the Battle of Lake Erie celebrates the U.S. victory in the War of 1812, but it doesn't depict the aftermath's devastating effects on Native Americans.
APUSH: KC-4.3.I.A.ii
1800–1848
Americans looked to define the nation’s identity, independence, and their ideals in the nineteenth century.
Dreaming big
Cole, the great American landscape painter, looks across the vast history of Western architecture
The Peaceable Kingdom as Penn’s parable
In his Peaceable Kingdom series of over 60 images, Hicks depicts a visionary scene of peace on earth that extends back to include William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania.
A Muslim among the founding fathers
How a portrait of an African Muslim came to hang side-by-side with the founding fathers in one of America's earliest museums.
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