The images that Sarah Mapps Douglass and peers made in friendship albums may be the earliest documented signed art works by African American women.
Art of the United States: 1800 – 1900
One of the most recognized paintings in American history, this painting is an ode to friendship and nature
Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits
These Indigenous men sat for this portrait during a forced tour of U.S. eastern cities after they were incarcerated as political prisoners
John Wesley Jarvis, Black Hawk and His ...
Edmonia Lewis, an artist of Black and Indigenous heritage, uses a neoclassical style to depict Indigenous subjects from a popular novel around the time of the U.S. Civil War
Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker
This early skyscraper stretches the limits of how tall a brick building can be
Burnham and Root, The Monadnock Building
This life-size painting of a wild turkey is a copy of the first page in Audubon's famous book Birds of America
John James Audubon, The Wild Turkey
Sculpted just before the U.S. Civil War, this monument to George Washington recalls an ancient Roman emperor and represents what the North and South could and could not agree on
Thomas Crawford, George Washington Equestrian Monument
Summer, autumn, a saw mill all provide metaphors about American republicanism in this pre-Civil War landscape
Jasper Francis Cropsey, Mount Jefferson, Pinkham Notch, ...
Achieving clear daguerreotypes from the unprecedented process of photographing through a telescope was anything but easy.
John Whipple, William Bond, and George Bond, ...
This vertical landscape of Virginia recalls ancient Roman architecture, tying the American republic to Rome's
Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia
Painted during Reconstruction, this sentimental watercolor depicts the hope of transformation and possibility
Winslow Homer, Taking Sunflower to Teacher
What does this marble sculpture of Cleopatra tell us about race and the Civil War in the U.S.?
William Wetmore Story, Cleopatra
Enslaved artist David Drake inscribed a poem onto this jug at a time when literacy among enslaved people was outlawed
David Drake, Double-handled jug
Is this painting of five men, possibly formerly enslaved, working for the Union Army during the Civil War a product of racist stereotypes, or does it humanize its subjects?
Winslow Homer, Army Teamsters
In the 1860s Carleton Watkins loaded a team of mules with his mammoth-plate camera and glass negatives and ventured into Yosemite Valley.
Peaks and perils: The life of Carleton ...
How Chicago architecture sprung up thanks to new technology at the turn of the century
Burnham and Root, Reliance Building
This plaque is the only marker of the burial ground of people who died while enslaved by the University of Alabama and its faculty.
Slave Burial Ground, University of Alabama
A conversation that took place on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, July, 2021
Monument Avenue and the Lost Cause
Dedicated in 1890; removed in 2021
Defeated, heroized, dismantled: Richmond’s Robert E. Lee ...
The University of Alabama, Civil War, and slavery; examining the role of architecture as historical marker
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