The National Museum of American History is not an art museum. But works of art fill its collections and testify to the vital place of art in everyday American life. The ceramics collections hold hundreds of examples of American and European art glass and pottery. Fashion sketches, illustrations, and prints are part of the costume collections. Donations from ethnic and cultural communities include many homemade religious ornaments, paintings, and figures. The Harry T Peters "America on Stone" collection alone comprises some 1,700 color prints of scenes from the 1800s. The National Quilt Collection is art on fabric. And the tools of artists and artisans are part of the Museum's collections, too, in the form of printing plates, woodblock tools, photographic equipment, and potters' stamps, kilns, and wheels. |
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Selected Objects |
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Fabric Sample from Marshall Field & Co. Collection
At the turn of the twentieth century, the American textile industry was the most technologically advanced in the world. However, it was still dependent on Europe, especially France, for art ...
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Kelp #3
Edward Weston was influential in the modern photography movement beginning in the 1930s. He is well known for photographing the natural surroundings of his home on the California coast. Weston ...
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Mourning Picture
This embroidered mourning picture was embroidered in Lititz, Pennsylvania, about 1816, using silk thread, silk chenille, gold spangles, watercolor, and ink on silk fabric. In a gilded wood frame, it ...
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Painting of the American Clipper Ship Coeur de Lion
In the center, the American clipper ship Coeur de Lion sails from left to right in the standard pose of the classic portrait of a ship entering port. The main ...
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Panorama of the The Union Army of the Cumberland
Late in the American Civil War (1861–1865), veterans of the Union Army of the Cumberland, believing that General William S. Rosecrans had been unfairly removed from command in 1864, engaged ...
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Pastoral Vase with Lid
This highly ornamented, carved porcelain vase was made by noted American art potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau in 1910. Robineau was astoundingly creative and productive. In addition to her art pottery, ...
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Photograph of a Blue Ash Tree
This photograph of a blue ash tree is one of forty-nine framed black and white photographic prints bequeathed to the Smithsonian by William F. Bucher of Washington, D.C. The collection ...
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Print of Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump
This is a mezzotint print, made in 1769, of Joseph Wright's oil painting, Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump. Completed in 1768, the original painting is now in the ...
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Sailor's Embroidery
Sailors sometimes used their off-duty hours aboard ship to do hand crafts such as carving, knotting, and needlework. This sailor's silk embroidery on linen of patriotic symbols and Civil War-related ...
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Whooping Crane, Grus Americana
Robert Havell Jr. engraved this copper plate in 1834 for John James Audubon's publication, Birds of America, published in Britain between 1827 and 1838 as a series of large folio ...
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