Art - Overview
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.
"Art - Overview" showing 19 items.
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The Last Moment of the Emperor Maximilian
- Description
- This relief print from The Magazine of Art dramatically illustrates the final moments before the execution of the Mexican Emperor Maximilian I in 1867. An Austrian noble by birth, Maximilian was installed by Napoleon III of France. French forces had invaded Mexico in 1862, after President Benito Juárez suspended payments on its foreign debt. Despite a major victory by Mexican forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, the French seized control of large sections of Mexico, including the capital. Maximilian was initially supported by Mexican conservatives in a backlash against the changes instituted by the Mexican War of Reform (1857–1861). However, once on the throne, his support of a free press, open universities, land reform, and other progressive ideas of the day proved to be out of step with his conservative constituency and the Catholic Church. Menaced by the government of the United States, victorious after its own civil war, and the rising success of Mexican nationalist forces, the French withdrew their military support of Maximilian, the last emperor of Mexico. This historic image is one of 45,000 artistic and commercials prints housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1890
- graphic artist
- Babbage, T.
- publisher
- Magazine of Art
- ID Number
- 1996.0197.350
- catalog number
- 1996.0197.350
- accession number
- 1996.0197
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Codex Telleriano-Remensis
- Description
- The civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico recorded their histories, religious beliefs, and scientific knowledge in books called codices. Codices are folded pieces of hide or bark that depict both mundane and spiritual scenes with images, symbols, and numbers. Scribes and painters busily recorded daily affairs, filling libraries and temples with books throughout Mexico and Central America. The majority of these illustrated books did not survive the Spanish conquest. But indigenous scribes trained by Spanish missionaries continued writing. While these colonial-era texts were still filled with pictures, over time they referenced the visual language of older Mexican and Maya books less and less. These new books about community histories (including land titles) and secret religious traditions were sometimes bilingual, combining Spanish with either Náhautl (the common language of central Mexico) or a Mayan language, both of which were now written with the Latin alphabet. This image is from an Italian reproduction of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, a manuscript co-written by Spanish friar Pedro de los Ríos about 1550. It documents the religious beliefs, calendar system, traditions, and history of the Tolteca-Chichimeca culture of Central Mexico. Joseph Florimond, Duc de Loubat, (1837–1921) was an American philanthropist who published a series of reproductions of pre-Hispanic and colonial-era Mexican manuscripts, including the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. The Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History houses several reproductions of Mesoamerican codices published for study by French, German, and Italian scholars at the turn of the 20th century.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900
- Associated Date
- 1900
- publisher
- Duc de Loubat
- ID Number
- 2006.0226.37
- catalog number
- 09449
- 2006.0226.37
- accession number
- 2006.0226
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Teatro Campesino Poster
- Description
- The Teatro Campesino was founded by Luis Valdez in 1965 to energize the political message of the United Farmer Workers of America using song, music, and drama. Modern, bicultural, and socially aware, the street theater of the Teatro Campesino is a touchstone of Chicano art. At first taking their performances to the fields, Teatro Campesino actors and writers used the language and stories of working men and women to advance the civil rights of Mexican Americans and to celebrate and reengage with their history and popular traditions. Like many Chicano art forms, the Teatro Campesino uses imagery that bends time to combine critiques of contemporary life with visual references to modern, colonial, and pre-Hispanic Mexican symbols. This poster for the Teatro Campesino appropriates the artwork of Mexico's most famous printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913), who is best known for his humorous depictions of skeletons engaged in the love and conflict of daily life.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 2007.3011.03
- nonaccession number
- 2007.3011
- catalog number
- 2007.3011.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Market Plaza Mexico
- Description
- This aquatint, titled Market Plaza by Geoge O. "Pop" Hart, was printed about 1925, a period of peak migration for workers streaming to the United States seeking opportunity in the United States and escape from the chaos of the Mexican Revolution (1910 1921). Many of the married men settled in the United States and brought their wives and families—from 1900 to 1932, the Mexican-born population of the United States grew from 103,000 to over 1,400,000. Other Mexican workers returned to their homes in Jalisco, Guanajuato, or Michoacán, and came north periodically in search of seasonal or temporary work. Replacing recently banned workers from Asia, these men provided cheap labor for the newly irrigated cotton fields of Texas and Arizona, the copper mines of Utah, the fruit processing plants of California, and the railroads that connected all points in between. An abundance of factory jobs also increasingly attracted Mexican migrants to cities like Chicago and Milwaukee. But many of these hard-earned economic opportunities in the United States came to an end during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mexican workers in areas like California had to compete with economic refugees from across the country. Many were targets of discrimination and anti-immigrant violence. Thousands of American citizens were among the 500,000 men, women, and children forcibly and suddenly moved to Mexico on buses and trains from Texas and California during the Great Depression. This print is one of a series of images created by American artists traveling in Mexico.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1925
- Associated Date
- 20th century
- graphic artist
- Hart, George O. "Pop"
- ID Number
- GA*14183
- catalog number
- 14183
- accession number
- 92987
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Hernan Cortes
- Description
- This engraving shows Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), the Spanish captain who headed the conquest of the Aztec Empire. He became a part of popular mythology the moment he arrived in Mexico in 1521. Cortés had spent time in Cuba killing and enslaving its indigenous inhabitants and administering the new social order of the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean. As his well-read memoirs attest, even his experiences in Cuba did not prepare him for the history-altering intrigues, battles, and cultural encounters between the Spanish and the Mexicans, Mayas, and their many neighbors in between. Motivated by an ancient notion of fame, Hernán Cortés wrote his own version of the conquest of Mexico that put him squarely at the center, favored by the Christian God. But neither his victories nor his pillage of the Mexican capital would have been possible without the aid of soldiers, slaves, and supplies from the enemies of the Aztecs. As a testament to Cortés's enduring fame, his portrait by the Spanish painter Antonio Carnicero was published as an engraving by Manuel Salvador y Carmona in 1791 in the book, Retratos de los españoles ilustres, con un epítome de sus vidas, (Portraits of Illustrious Spaniards, with a Synopsis of Their Lives.)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1795
- depicted
- Cortes, Hernan
- original artist
- Carnicero, D. A.
- graphic artist
- Carmona, D. J. A.
- ID Number
- GA*20683
- catalog number
- 20683
- accession number
- 226630
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Toluca Market
- Description
- This scene of the Toluca market was depicted by Alan Crane in 1946. Housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History, it is one of a series of lithographs of Mexican landscapes and genre scenes he printed during the 1940s. The growth of the tourist industry, rebounding after WWII, created a market for images of an idyllic Mexico—peaceful, scenic, and premodern. The elements of everyday life shown here—the densely packed stands of the ceramics vendors, the pulquería (a cantina that serves pulque, the fermented juice of the maguey plant), and the traditional dress of the marketeers—were as foreign to the urbanized Mexican American youth in Los Angeles, El Paso, and San Antonio as they were to American tourists seeking a memento of "Old Mexico." The generations of youths who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were fundamental in negotiating the language, aesthetics, and political vision that would constitute the contemporary culture of Mexican Americans. These young men and women, many of whom were war veterans as well as industrial and agricultural workers, created empowering images of Mexican Americans as they defined new roles for themselves as activists during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1946
- graphic artist
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23825
- catalog number
- 23825
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mariposas en Patyenaro
- Description
- With the lucrative growth of tourism in 20th century, stereotypical and processed images of Mexico have often been marketed to the American imagination. In them, "South of the Border" becomes a sunny pre-modern place of vacations, trinkets, and convenient lawlessness. But contrasting and complex images of Mexico have pervaded the American imagination since well before the Civil War. Mexico, itself defined by cultural and racial exchange, has historically represented a starkly different social order to most Americans. A country with cheap land and labor and bountiful mineral and agricultural resources offered economic opportunities to many Americans, from white financiers and mercenaries to black oil workers and baseball players. Mexico was also a refuge for many American artists, of Mexican descent or otherwise, who imagined Mexico in different ways. Some artists sought inspiration from its ancient history, and others came looking for a pristine and exotic landscape. This lithograph, titled Mariposas at Patyenaro was drawn by Alan Crane in 1943. It depicts the picturesque, butterfly-shaped nets of Mexican fisherman paddling their canoes on a lake. Alan Horton Crane (1901–1969) was a Brooklyn-born illustrator best known for his landscapes and genre scenes of life in Mexico and New England. Similar prints by Crane showing scenes of idyllic Mexico are housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1943
- maker
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23830
- catalog number
- 23830
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Night of the Dead
- Description
- Though anchored in local Roman Catholic traditions, many of the religious beliefs and symbols of Mexican Americans have roots in indigenous notions about the soul and our universe. Between October 31st and November 2nd, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is celebrated with family, decorating home altars and visiting the graves of loved ones. A holiday with much regional and individual variation, it is traditionally an occasion to commemorate parents and grandparents with altars of marigolds, candles, alcohol, skeleton-shaped sweets, and other foods and personal objects favored by the dearly departed. Day of the Dead celebrations were reinvented across many Mexican American communities beginning in the 1970s, as the Chicano movement promoted and readapted Mexican cultural practices. Many artists since then have seized on the visual power of the altar as a conduit for personal and public memory. In the United States, Day of the Dead altars can be found interrogating life and critiquing politics in public places. Contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations have memorialized those who have died from AIDS, gang violence, the civil wars in Central America, and crossing the border. This lithograph, titled Night of the Dead, was originally drawn in ink by Alan Crane in 1958. Alan Horton Crane (1901–1969) was a Brooklyn-born illustrator best known for his landscapes and genre scenes of life in Mexico and New England. This image is part of a series of prints by Alan Crane housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1958
- maker
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23836
- catalog number
- 23836
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Adiós Espalda Mojada
- Description
- For centuries in both Mexico and the United States, racism has organized society and regulated the work and aspirations of Europeans, Africans, Native peoples, and their mixed descendants. Though inhabiting segregated spaces, Mexican American communities expanded by the 1960s, stretching from the Yakima Valley of Washington to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and into the Midwest, particularly Chicago. The people living in these towns and cities represented a mix of multigenerational U.S. citizens, new residents, and temporary Mexican workers. While their experiences varied, all these communities were shaped by a legacy of discrimination in school, housing, and employment. Economic exploitation, in the form of race-based wages and substandard working conditions, particularly in fields, mines, and factories, were their daily realities. Despite the participation of Mexican American soldiers in all major U.S. conflicts since the Civil War, and the contribution of Mexican workers to the American agricultural and mining economy (and the vast economy of the West generally), the citizenship and human rights of their communities were contested and continue to be today. This lithograph, titled Goodbye Wetback, was designed by artist B. Barrios and printed by Lynton Kistler in 1951 in Los Angeles. It depicts a rural Mexican family confronting, with a mix of fear and stoicism, the racist encounter implied in the title. Kistler printed the work of many artists, some of whom specifically depicted Latino, Native American, and East Asian subjects. Over 2,700 of his prints are housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- ADD MORE SUBJECTS LIKE LATINO, IMMIGRATION, PREJUDICE
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1951
- Associated Date
- 1951
- printer
- Kistler, Lynton R.
- graphic artist
- Barrios, B.
- ID Number
- 1978.0650.0968
- accession number
- 1978.0650
- catalog number
- 1978.0650.0968
- 78.0650.0968
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mexican Boy
- Description
- This lithograph of a boy at work was designed in the late 1930s by the Mexican American artist Ramón Contreras (1919-1940). Mexican-born, he grew up in San Bernardino, a major agricultural town east of Los Angeles. His career was tragically short. Before he died of cancer at the age of 21, Contreras became the youngest artist ever invited to the Golden Gate International Exposition, and traveled to Mexico to meet the famed muralist Diego Rivera. Contreras came of age during the Great Depression (1930s), a period of economic crisis for all Americans and for people around the globe. Much of the art produced during these difficult years reflects a political and aesthetic vision–to document and ennoble the lives of ordinary working people. Here, Contreras presents us with an idealized image of a confident young man in motion. Identifiably Mexican with his serape draped over one shoulder, the boy drawn by Contreras triumphantly at the center of the frame is perhaps a fruit vendor. He is probably not a fruit picker–note the non-Californian bananas arrayed with other warm-weather fruits in his basket. This lithograph was printed in about 1950 by Lynton Kistler–it is one of the 2,700 prints by this prominent Los Angeles printer that are housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1950
- graphic artist
- Kistler, Lynton R.
- original artist
- Contreras, Ramon
- ID Number
- 1978.0650.1130
- accession number
- 1978.0650
- catalog number
- 1978.0650.1130
- 78.0650.1130
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center