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 151 items.
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Albert Graeser Paperweight
- Description (Brief)
- In the 1700s, paperweights made from textured stone or bronze were part of the writer’s tool kit, which also included a quill pen and stand, inkpot, and blotter. By the mid-1800s, decorative paperweights produced by glassmakers in Europe and the United States became highly desired collectibles.
- Decorative glass paperweights reflected the 19th-century taste for intricate, over-the-top designs. Until the spread of textiles colorized with synthetic dyes, ceramics and glass were among the few objects that added brilliant color to a 19th-century Victorian interior. The popularity of these paperweights in the 1800s testifies to the sustained cultural interest in hand craftsmanship during an age of rapid industrialization.
- This paperweight was made by Albert A. Graeser and features an enameled decoration of three joined rings along with two sprays of roses. The back is marked “Made by Albert Graeser, Pittsburgh, Pa.”
- In 1892, Graeser patented a process for making advertising paperweights in which he sealed a image to the underside of a rectangular glass blank using an enamel-like glaze.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1890-1900
- maker
- Graeser, Albert A.
- ID Number
- CE*60.133
- catalog number
- 60.133
- accession number
- 211475
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Christopher Columbus Dying
- Description
- Sixteen-year-old Gerome Ferris etched this print in 1879 after his own painting of the dying Christopher Columbus, 1506 Last Days of C. Columbus at Vallodolid. The current location of the painting is unknown, but the choice of topic anticipates Gerome’s future as a history painter, focusing on American narrative subjects.
- After death, Christopher Columbus’s journeys were not over. His remains traveled from Vallodolid to Seville and in 1542 were taken to the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, colonized by Columbus after 1492. After a move to Havana, Cuba, they returned to Seville cathedral in 1898 where they are today.
- The etching was printed on chine-collé, a very thin sheet of paper that accepts the image in passing through the press with a heavier sheet of backing paper to which is it glued during the printing.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
- ID Number
- GA*14450
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14450
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Locomotion, Plate 55 "Walking, Turning Around, Action of Aversion"
- Description
- Eadweard Muybridge's cyanotypes are working proofs (contact prints) made from the more than 20,000 negatives he took at the University of Pennsylvania from 1884 to 1886. There Muybridge photographed human and animal subjects in motion from lateral (parallel), front, and rear positions. For the lateral views he used up to 36 lenses in 12 to 24 cameras placed at 90-degree angles to his subjects. Muybridge added two more cameras, each holding up to 12 lenses and placed at 60-degree angles, for the front and rear "foreshortening" views.
- Since the original negatives no longer exist, the cyanotypes record complete images before Muybridge edited and cropped them for publication. The mounted cyanotypes for plate 55 represent one of over 750 sets of proofs in this unique collection of early photography of motion at the Smithsonian. Comparisons between Muybridge's working cyanotype proofs and his final collotype prints prove that he freely reprinted, cropped, deleted, or substituted negatives to make the assemblage of 781 collotype in the portfolio "Animal Locomotion".
- In plate 55, frame 3 of the rear views is blank and crossed out, indicating a camera malfunction. The remaining 11 frames were reassembled and renumbered for the final print.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1885-07-28
- maker
- Muybridge, Eadweard
- ID Number
- PG*3856.0049
- accession number
- 98473
- catalog number
- 3856.0049
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
[Battlefield picture in Gettysburg cyclorama.] 5564 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- Date
- 1900
- 1910
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 20491
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Field hospital and General Meade's headquarters--Battle of Gettysburg. 5565 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- [Neg made 11/17/25] on envelope
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 20492
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Charge of the 19th Regiment--Battle of Gettysburg. 5566 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 20493
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Wheeler's N.Y. Battery coming into action--Battle of Gettysburg. 5567 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 20494
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
General Hancock and Staff--Battle of Gettysburg. 5568 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Subject
- Hancock, Winfield Scott
- Local number
- RSN 20495
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Explosion of ammunition case, near 28th Mass. Infantry--Battle of Gettysburg. 5572 interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.9 [201]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 20499
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Crayola Crayons
- Description
- Cherished by generations of child artists, Crayola crayons were invented in 1903 by the Binney & Smith Company of Easton, Pennsylvania. Using paraffin wax and nontoxic pigments, the company produced a coloring stick that was safe, sturdy, and affordable. The name "Crayola," coined by the wife of the company's founder, comes from "craie," French for "chalk," and "oleaginous," or "oily."
- This Crayola set for "young artists" was one of the earliest produced. Its twenty-eight colors include celestial blue, golden ochre, rose pink, and burnt sienna. The box is marked, "No. 51, Young Artists Drawing Crayons, for coloring Maps, Pictures" and contains twenty two of the original 28 crayons. Crayons are icons of American childhood that recall our collective memory for coloring both inside and outside the lines. Affordable and easily obtainable, they have transformed art education and fostered creativity in schools and homes, providing color to children for generations.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1903
- maker
- Binney and Smith
- ID Number
- 2000.0073.41
- accession number
- 2000.0073
- catalog number
- 2000.0073.41
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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