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Lawrence/Puryear
Inspired by the musical storytelling of West Africa’s griots, Jacob Lawrence employed in “The Migration of the Negro” a painted and written narrative to invoke how African-American families “came up” from the South to settle in cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Suspended above the floor and anchored by almost undetectable wires, Martin Puryear’s 36-foot Ladder for Booker T. Washington seems to float in space as it rises and abruptly narrows at the top. The artistic metaphor of a ladder not easily climbed dovetails with the contradictions in the legacy of slave-turned-educator Booker T. Washington. |
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John James Audubon
American Flamingo, 1838The glory of nature captured with passion and grace!
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Brooklyn Bridge
A Walker Evans photograph and a Joseph Stella painting
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The Chrysler Building
1926-1930This is an homage to one of the most lilting and beautiful structures in New York and the world. Its art deco grandeur survives with authority and wonder.
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Childe Hassam
Allies Day, May 1917, 1917American impressionism, WWI, red, white, and blue, and the love of a parade
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Benton/Bingham
Populist paintings about the roots of our own democracy, narrated with enthusiasm and care by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary
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Cassatt/Sargent
Mothers and children
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Washington/Selma
A beautiful comparison of two great works — one a monumental re-imagining of an outsized historic moment — the other an “in-the-moment” photograph
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Edward Hopper
House by the Railroad, 1925The persistence of the American gothic notion of mood and architecture in photography, film, film design, even cartoon; the evocative loneliness of Hopper
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Lawrence/Puryear
African-American themes depicted by African-American artists
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Black Hawk/Catlin
This piece showcases the American Indian traditions themselves as well as our desires to keep Indian lore within a certain context.
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Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Acuóa
San Antonio, Texas, 1755A living and functioning church full of history, sentiment, and various religious influences
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Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother, 1936“Migrant Mother” is one of the most haunting images of American lore. Its resonance has increased with a threatening economy.
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Paul Revere
A portrait and a depiction of the famous ride
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Quilts of the 19th and 20th Centuries
An array of American quilts with an emphasis on the sumptuous Amish quilts of Lancaster County, PA and the more common and entertaining “crazies”
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Sheeler/Wright
American landscapes, one bucolic and the other an industrialized setting evoking the River Rouge Ford Motor Co plant outside Detroit
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Saint-Gaudens/Homer
The Civil War, its nobility and its toll, during and after
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Washington/Lincoln/Franklin
Illustration expanding ways of seeing our great statesmen
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Thomas Eakins
John Biglin in a Single Scull, c. 1873Shot on the Schuykill River in Philadelphia, the real location of the painting
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Silver of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries
A lovely re-enactment of an 18th century tea party complete with silversmith in the Paul Revere tradition
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Wyeth/Rockwell
The noble savage and the great representative of personal freedom — both encompassing those emotions
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Tiffany/Whistler
The decorative arts!
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Thomas Cole
Home and what comprises home – both as a depiction of patrimony and in the natural world
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Bierstadt/Diebenkorn
Light, landscape, color, westward expansion
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Romare Bearden
The Dove, 1964Collage; the instincts of a master putting it together, bit by bit, sound by sound, stroke by stroke, piece by piece
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Pottery and Baskets
c. 1100 to c. 1960Native American and African traditions depicting roots and routes of migration and culture
Picturing America has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Because democracy demands wisdom.
[...] Picturing America is a collection of posters given to schools around the country by a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities. This painting is part of that series. Picturing America posters come with a video, questions, information and lesson ideas for each image. Before starting our own paintings, we watched Picturing America’s video on Jacob Lawrence. [...]