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Oil painting by Samuel F. B. Morse titled "The Muse: Susan Walker Morse."

Jilted: Samuel F. B. Morse at Art’s End

The rejection that ended Morse's art career eventually led to the invention of the telegraph.
by Paul Staiti via Panorama on June 18, 2024
A woman in a dress shows off her drawings.

Pioneering D.C. Artist Inez Demonet Helped WWI Soldiers Put Their Lives Back Together

Meet the Washington artist who pioneered the field of medical illustration — and helped repair the lives of soldiers returning from WWI.
by Katherine Brodt via Boundary Stones on March 29, 2024
Botanical drawing of a peach.

In 1886, a US Agency Set Out to Record New Fruit Varieties. The Results Are Wondrous.

The history and legacy of a beautiful project to record thousands of new fruit varieties.
by Sebastian Ko via Aeon on October 5, 2023
1859 painting "Negro Life in the South," with enslaved people in a courtyard.

How An Abolitionist Painting Set In D.C. Became Proslavery Propaganda

An 1859 painting by Eastman Johnson depicted enslaved people in a D.C. courtyard. Intended to humanize them, it was coopted by slavery defenders.
by Kristina R. Gaddy via Retropolis on December 17, 2022
“Dressing for the Carnival” painting, featuring colorfully dressed character Jonkonnu surrounded by Black women and children.

Race, War, and Winslow Homer

The artist’s experiences in the Civil War and after helped him transcend stereotypes in portraying Black experience.
by Claudia Roth Pierpont via The New Yorker on April 7, 2022
"The Washington Family," painting by Edward Savage, c. 1789–1796. (National Gallery of Art)

The Silence of Slavery in Revolutionary War Art

Artists captured and honored the intensity of the American Revolution, but the bravery and role of Black men in the war was not portrayed.
by Edna Gabler via Journal of the American Revolution on July 13, 2021
“Natural Bridge, Virginia” (1860) by David Johnson. Oil on canvas.

Rekindling the Wonder of Natural Bridge, Once a Testament to American Grandeur

"Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, surveys the arch as icon and propaganda.
by Philip Kennicott via Washington Post on June 16, 2021
George Washington Carver painted in the role of George Washington crossing the Delaware, surrounded by racist caricaturess of African Americans

Robert Colescott Asks Us to Reimagine Icons of American History

Colescott satirizes an iconic painting of George Washington, and in doing so, challenges the viewer to reconsider their beliefs about American history.
by Sotheby's via YouTube on May 11, 2021
Philip Guston

Philip Guston’s Peculiar History Lesson

On the painter’s politics of self-questioning.
by Barry Schwabsky via The Nation on April 12, 2021
Jacob Lawrence.

Jacob Lawrence Went Beyond the Constraints of a Segregated Art World

Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.
by Rachel Himes via Jacobin on February 4, 2021
“Two Guns Arikara” (1974-77) painting of a Native American man, by T. C. Cannon.

T. C. Cannon’s Blazing Promise

The painter, who died at the age of thirty-one, vivified his Native American heritage with inspirations from modern art.
by Peter Schjeldahl via The New Yorker on April 6, 2019
Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Modern War

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Virginia B. Spivey via Digital Public Library of America on February 28, 2018
Painting from 1784 of Romans doing a straight-armed salute.

The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.
by Sarah E. Bond, Stephanie Wong via Hyperallergic on January 22, 2025
Portrait of Ena and Betty Wertheimer by John Singer Sargent, 1901.

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
by Ruth Bernard Yeazell via New York Review of Books on October 31, 2024
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
by Ruth Franklin via Harper’s on October 23, 2024
Autumn, an 1856 sunset landscape painting by Frederic Church.

The Sound of the Picturesque

Charles Ives and the visual.
by Tim Barringer via The American Scholar on September 13, 2024
Gustav Mahler; Charles Ives.

Anchoring Shards of Memory

We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both composers mined the past to root themselves in an unstable present.
by Joseph Horowitz via The American Scholar on September 9, 2024
Painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman with pale skin and curled hair wearing a blue shirt with pink bow collar.

An Art Mystery is Solved, and a Historic Portrait Goes on Display

The painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell is likely the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.
by James Johnston via Retropolis on June 24, 2024
Aaron Douglas, “Still Life,” n.d.

The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem

How Black artists made modernism their own.
by Susan Tallman via The Atlantic on June 14, 2024
Keith Haring spray painting

Keith Haring, the Boy Who Cried Art

Was he a brilliant painter or a brilliant brand?
by Jackson Arn via The New Yorker on March 4, 2024
Ledger drawing of Plains Indians on horseback.

A Shameful US History Told Through Ledger Drawings

In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.
by John Yau via Hyperallergic on February 21, 2024
Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c. 1940.

Hard Times

The radical art of the Depression years.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on November 27, 2023
View of Brooklyn from Trinity Church, 1853.
original

Mettlesome, Mad, Extravagant City

In the streets of New York, we try to imagine the city as Walt Whitman, and other artists of his time, experienced it.
by Ed Ayers on September 21, 2023
original

Pieces of the Past

Dispatches from a spine-tingling day of visits to the places where James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Thomas Cole created their most famous works.
by Ed Ayers on March 15, 2023
Two boys looking at the “General George Washington Resigning His Commission" painting in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

Art at Capitol Honors 141 Enslavers and 13 Confederates. Who Are They?

A Washington Post investigation of more than 400 artworks in the U.S. Capitol building found that one-third honor enslavers or Confederates.
by Gillian Brockell via Washington Post on December 27, 2022
Painting, James Daugherty, "Thanksgiving Greetings."

You Cannot Give Thanks for What Is Stolen

American artists were instrumental in propagating the false narrative of Thanksgiving, a deliberate erasure of violence against Indigenous peoples.
by Joseph Pierce via Hyperallergic on November 23, 2022
Diorama of a cluster of houses and people along a waterfront, with a ship in the foreground.

On the Rich, Hidden History of the Banjo

The banjo did not exist before it was created by the hands of enslaved people in the New World.
by Kristina R. Gaddy via Literary Hub on October 24, 2022
Side-by-side presidential portraits of George Washington, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush

The Presidents Who Hated Their Presidential Portraits

Theodore Roosevelt said his made him look like “a mewing cat.” Lyndon Johnson called his “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” Ronald Reagan ordered a do-over.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on September 7, 2022
Wood engraving showing plantation scenes

Value and Its Sources: Slavery and the History of Art

Two new studies ask readers to think expansively about art’s involvement in a broader system of racial capitalism.
by Caitlin Meehye Beach via Art In America on July 20, 2022
A pair of color stereogram photographs featuring people sitting in front of a desert stone structure.

New Look, Same Great Look

The history of humans being confounded by color photography.
by Kim Beil via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 16, 2022
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