Cole, the great American landscape painter looks across the vast history of Western architecture
Location Country: United States
The dubious justice of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings.
Blythe, Justice
Martyr or murderer? John Brown has polarized political opinion from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement.
Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John ...
Before T.V. and Twitter, politicians talked to voters face-to-face.
George Caleb Bingham, Country Politician
The Winchester Bible is among the most magnificent illuminated manuscripts made in England in the twelfth century.
The Morgan Leaf from The Winchester Bible
Living in peace—predator and prey, and Native Americans and settler colonists—but for how long?
Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable
On the eve of the American Revolution, a glimpse of politics in portraiture
John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Mr. and ...
How a portrait of an African muslim came to hang side-by-side with the founding fathers in one of America's earliest museums.
An African muslim among the founding fathers, ...
Global trade in a cup of tea: Colonial America, sugar and slavery.
The triangle trade and the colonial table, ...
The gun that "won the West" also transformed American manufacturing and marketing.
Inventing America, Colt’s Experimental Pocket Pistol
Captured here in paint, this grand Californian landscape would soon disappear under water.
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California
This one-of-a-kind suitcase tells the surprising story of an artist, a wedding, and a people.
Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase
The makers of this ostentatious ceramic jug used images from popular satire to poke fun at the Civil War politics.
Anna Pottery, Snake jug
This eclectic assortment of carved objects speaks to the experience of a formerly-enslaved man in the post-Civil War South.
William Howard (attributed), Writing desk
What most American students learn about as Custer's Last Stand was the last great victory for the Lakota people.
Henry Oscar One Bull, Custer’s War
These reliquary figures helped a nomadic society to honor their loved ones after death.
Kota reliquary (mbulu ngulu)
How to impress your courtiers: a lesson from the Kingdom of Benin
Benin Plaques
Discover what was found inside this 13th century sculpture
Prince Shōtoku at Age Two
Explore Dürer's masterful "psychological self-portrait" and the hidden meanings of the various objects in it.
Decoding art: Dürer’s Melencolia I
Thought the Puritans were dour? Think again!