Art of the Americas to World War I
Brought to you by Smarthistory. Here's where you'll find art from the ancient cultures of North and South America (and what we call Mesoamerica) through the period of European colonization and independence—and into the 19th century.
8 units188 videos17 hours
Learn it live with a class on Puzzicle · Teachers: use it with your class
Unit 1: Beginner guides to the Art of the Americas
Spanish viceroyalties
Unit 2: North America before c. 1500
Ancestral Puebloan (formerly Anasazi)
Teotihuacan
Classic Veracruz culture
Maya
Paquimé (Casas Grandes)
Aztec (Mexica)
Coatlicue ✓ Check-ins7:15
Unearthing the Aztec past, the destruction of the Templo Mayor ✓ Check-ins6:45
Tlaloc vessel ✓ Check-ins3:32
The Sun Stone (The Calendar Stone) ✓ Check-ins6:29
Coyolxauhqui Stone ✓ Check-ins5:30
Monolith of Tlaltecuhtli (Earth Lord) ✓ Check-ins4:14
The House of the Eagles, and sculptures of Mictlantecuhtli and Eagle Warrior ✓ Check-ins5:36
Brazier of Chicomecoatl ✓ Check-ins3:44
Feathered headdress ✓ Check-ins4:17
Unit 3: South America before c. 1500
Chavín
Moche
Inka
Ancient Colombian chiefdoms
Unit 4: Colonial Latin America
Viceroyalty of New Spain
An introduction to New Spain ✓ Check-ins4:47
Virgin of Guadalupe ✓ Check-ins3:40
The convento of Acolman ✓ Check-ins6:43
Murals from New Spain, San Agustín de Acolman ✓ Check-ins6:08
Atrial Cross, convento San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century ✓ Check-ins4:20
A Renaissance miniature in wood and feathers ✓ Check-ins5:27
A shimmering saint, St. John in featherwork ✓ Check-ins2:27
Baltasar de Echave Ibía, The Hermits ✓ Check-ins6:41
Sebastián López de Arteaga, Marriage of the Virgin ✓ Check-ins4:44
Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and Hunting Scene (Brooklyn Biombo) ✓ Check-ins7:31
Miguel de Herrera, Portrait of a Lady ✓ Check-ins3:52
Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Christ Consoled by Angels ✓ Check-ins5:07
Jerónimo de Balbás, Altar of the Kings (Altar de los Reyes) ✓ Check-ins5:16
Casta paintings: constructing identity in Spanish colonial America ✓ Check-ins5:39
Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe ✓ Check-ins6:05
Christ Crucified, a Hispano-Philippine ivory ✓ Check-ins2:49
Saintly violence? Santiago in the Americas ✓ Check-ins3:00
What does the music of heaven sound like?— St Cecilia in New Spain ✓ Check-ins4:31
Viceroyalty of Peru
Unit 5: Native American art after 1500
East
West
Juana Basilia Sitmelelene, Presentation Basket (Chumash) ✓ Check-ins4:15
The power of the bear and the story an American massacre ✓ Check-ins5:15
Headdress (Cheyenne or Lakota)2:15
Mató Nájin/Standing Bear, Battle of Little Bighorn ✓ Check-ins4:02
Two sides of Lakota life on a beaded suitcase ✓ Check-ins6:27
Custer's Last Stand — from the Lakota perspective ✓ Check-ins6:07
Paukeigope (Kiowa), Cradleboard ✓ Check-ins6:47
Carrie Bethel, Basket bowl ✓ Check-ins2:44
Allan Houser, “Earth Song” ✓ Check-ins7:10
Brummett Echohawk, An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron ✓ Check-ins5:14
Southwest
Northwest coast & Arctic
Tsimshian shaman’s rattle ✓ Check-ins2:05
Reclaiming history, a Kwakwaka'wakw belt ✓ Check-ins8:20
Haida totem pole, from Old Kasaan ✓ Check-ins4:40
Haida potlatch pole ✓ Check-ins5:49
Bentwood Boxes of the Northwest Coast peoples ✓ Check-ins4:12
Tlingit mortuary and memorial totem poles ✓ Check-ins6:58
Proud Raven totem pole at Saxman Totem Park ✓ Check-ins5:47
The story of the Oyster Man, a Tlingit totem pole ✓ Check-ins4:35
The Chief Johnson Totem Pole ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip10:15
Unit 6: British Colonies to the Early Republic
Colonial period
Thought the Puritans were dour? Think again! ✓ Check-ins4:47
African Burial Ground, New York City ✓ Check-ins8:42
A Jewish family in early New York ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip4:33
The making of an American myth: Benjamin West, Penn's Treaty with the Indians ✓ Check-ins4:12
Copley, Boy with a Squirrel ✓ Check-ins4:19
Ostentatious Plainness: Copley's portrait of the Mifflins ✓ Check-ins5:22
Early Republic
Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip5:45
Gilbert Stuart, The Skater ✓ Check-ins5:09
An African muslim among the founding fathers, Charles Willson Peale’s Yarrow Mamout ✓ Check-ins5:03
Charles Willson Peale, Staircase Group (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale) ✓ Check-ins4:26
Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale with a Geranium ✓ Check-ins4:54
"We have met the enemy and they are ours." ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip5:20
Clean water for a young Philadelphia ✓ Check-ins5:58
Unit 7: United States in the 19th century
A beginner's guide
Romanticism in the United States
Allston, Elijah in the Desert ✓ Check-ins4:39
Wilderness, settlement, and American identity ✓ Check-ins5:59
Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden ✓ Check-ins3:55
Thomas Cole, The Oxbow ✓ Check-ins5:32
Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life ✓ Check-ins8:14
Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable ✓ Check-ins7:20
Karl Bodmer, expedition prints ✓ Check-ins6:05
It's not only about the American Revolution, Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip9:57
George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley ✓ Check-ins5:04
Jasper Francis Cropsey, Mount Jefferson, Pinkham Notch, White Mountains ✓ Check-ins6:00
Picturing Spanish conquest in an era of U.S. expansion ✓ Check-ins4:56
Revisiting a frozen sea ✓ Check-ins4:45
Envisioning Manifest Destiny, Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire ✓ Check-ins6:13
The painting that inspired a National Park ✓ Check-ins8:51
Science, religion, and politics, Church's Cotopaxi ✓ Check-ins4:46
Lane, Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine ✓ Check-ins3:27
Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite, and the battle for National Parks ✓ Check-ins5:41
Realism in the United States
Becoming a city: daily life in 1820, Brooklyn ✓ Check-ins6:16
John Wesley Jarvis, Black Hawk and His Son Whirling Thunder ✓ Check-ins5:13
John James Audubon, The Wild Turkey ✓ Check-ins5:35
Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits ✓ Check-ins4:44
Before the Civil War, the Mexican-American War as prelude ✓ Check-ins6:40
Face to face with the voters: Bingham's Country Politician ✓ Check-ins4:27
Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia ✓ Check-ins4:03
Blythe, Justice ✓ Check-ins4:16
Martyr or murderer? Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown ✓ Check-ins6:10
The Civil War: putting Liberty front and center ✓ Check-ins3:58
Mending America, women and the Civil War ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip5:35
Cotton, oil, and the economics of history ✓ Check-ins7:15
Heroes of modern surgery: Eakins' Dr. Gross and Dr. Agnew ✓ Check-ins9:04
The U.S. Civil War, sharpshooters, and Winslow Homer ✓ Check-ins8:04
Winslow Homer, Army Teamsters ✓ Check-ins5:42
Winslow Homer, Taking Sunflower to Teacher ✓ Check-ins4:51
Homer, The Life Line ✓ Check-ins4:06
Homer, The Fog Warning (Halibut Fishing) ✓ Check-ins4:17
Homer, Northeaster ✓ Check-ins2:40
Winslow Homer, Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba ✓ Check-ins6:16
Winslow Homer, The Shell Heap ✓ Check-ins5:46
The closing of the frontier and The Fall of the Cowboy ✓ Check-ins5:57
American Aestheticism and the Gilded Age
Photography
Sculpture and architecture
Slave Burial Ground, University of Alabama ✓ Check-ins4:04
David Drake, Double-handled jug ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip6:28
Federal Hall National Memorial ✓ Check-ins5:12
Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York ✓ Check-ins6:27
Cultures and slavery in the American south: a Face Jug from Edgefield county ✓ Check-ins5:34
The Little Round House at the University of Alabama ✓ Check-ins6:02
John Quincy Adams Ward, The Freedman ✓ Check-ins6:23
William Wetmore Story, Cleopatra ✓ Check-ins4:01
Anna Pottery, Snake jug ✓ Check-ins5:23
Hiram S. Powers, The Greek Slave ✓ Check-ins6:14
Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker ✓ Check-ins5:43
Thomas Crawford, George Washington Equestrian Monument ✓ Check-ins6:02
The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip6:09
Monument Avenue and the Lost Cause ✓ Check-ins6:27
Defeated, heroized, dismantled: Richmond's Robert E. Lee Monument ✓ Check-ins4:40
Burnham and Root, The Monadnock Building ✓ Check-ins4:15
Burnham and Root, Reliance Building ✓ Check-ins3:52
Louis Sullivan and the invention of the skyscraper ✓ Check-ins6:46
Louis H. Sullivan, Schlesinger & Mayer Building (later Carson Pirie Scott) ✓ Check-ins8:19
Mark Hopkins House Side Chair (Herter Brothers) ✓ Check-ins5:38
Robert Mills and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, Washington Monument ✓ Check-ins7:40
Unit 8: Latin America after independence
Art of Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries
Learn this with a class
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