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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.
Alma Thomas, Lunar Rendezvous—Circle of Flowers
Thomas takes inspiration from both the 1969 moon landing and her backyard garden
Sari Dienes, Star Circle
A plaster cast of a manhole cover from the streets of Manhattan is a testament to this artist's experimental use of materials
Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags
Cartoonish coyotes play on Fonseca's overlapping identities as queer, American, and Indigenous.
Brummett Echohawk, An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron
Light and color take center stage in this soul illustration of the Oklahoma landscape where Echohawk and his family have lived for generations.
Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957
Stripes of industrial spray paint on this canvas recall the industrial city and undersides of highways
Norman Lewis, Untitled
Lewis leaves behind the figure for abstracted fragments at the end of World War II
Sam Gilliam, Purpled (Chasers Series)
Sam Gilliam trespasses the distinction between painting and sculpture
Gee’s bend, quilting over generations
Gee's Bend quilts challenge notions of what is — and what is not — modern art
Representing the inner self: Charles Sebree’s The Mystic
Charles Sebree expresses his inner self in The Mystic.
Mies in Manhattan, mid-fifties modern: The Seagram Building
An International Style gem on Park Avenue
A modern icon: Beauford Delaney’s Marian Anderson
Delaney celebrates the famous opera singer Marian Anderson as a modern icon of Black excellence and civil rights
Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!
