The Civil War redefined America and forever changed American art. The war’s grim reality, captured through the new medium of photography, was laid bare. American artists could not glamorize the hero on the battlefield.

The Great American Hall of Wonders is a vividly illustrated survey of the American ingenuity that energized all aspects of nineteenth-century society, from the painting of landscapes and scenes of everyday life to the planning of scientific expedition and the development of new mechanica

Artist George Catlin journeyed west five times in the 1830s, traversing the Great Plains and visiting more than 140 American Indian tribes. In hundreds of canvases, Catlin recorded the lifeways of Plains Indians, including illustrating massive herds of buffalo and their importance in daily life.

Greta Pratt returns to the county fairs of her childhood in the American Midwest, creating photographs that capture the spirit of rural life in the region.

A Measure of the Earth provides an window into the traditional basketry revival of the past fifty years.

Joseph Rodriguez’s color photographs bring the reader inside Spanish Harlem, where he documents not only the grim realities of drug abuse, AIDS, and crime in New York’s oldest barrio, but also its vibrant street life.

WONDER celebrates the renovation and reopening of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery with an immersive web of magic.

Designed by James Renwick Jr. in 1858, the building that houses the Renwick Gallery was the first in the United States conceived expressly as a public art museum.

Modern Masters: American Abstraction at Midcentury features more than thirty artists who transformed American art in the years after World War II. Seventy artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, reproduced in full color, convey the dynamism and raw energy of the period.

In eighty-eight striking paintings and sculptures, Crosscurrents captures modernism as it moved from early abstractions by O’Keeffe, to Picasso and Pollock in midcentury, to pop riffs on contemporary culture by Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, and Tom Wesselmann—all illustrating the com

Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum commemorates “Treasures to Go,” a series of eight exhibitions from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which toured the nation through 2002.

Author Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964) began making portraits in 1932. Over the next three decades, he asked writers, musicians, athletes, politicians, and others to sit for him—many of them central figures in the Harlem Renaissance.

Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum commemorates Treasures to Go, a series of eight exhibitions from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, touring the nation through 2002.

Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum commemorates “Treasures to Go,” a series of eight exhibitions from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which toured the nation through 2002.

In the nineteenth century, people from all walks of life embraced the new medium of photography with unparalleled enthusiasm. For artist and inventor Samuel F. B.