The Seeing America Project
Seeing America was created by Smarthistory with 17 leading museums collections. Together we examine the long history of the United States, from before European settlers to the modern era.
9 units205 videos19 hours
Learn it live with a class on Puzzicle · Teachers: use it with your class
Unit 1: Theme: National Identity
1200–1870
America before Columbus: a Mississippian view of the cosmos ✓ Check-ins7:04
Fashioning diplomacy: the Anishinaabe, Britain, and 18th-century America ✓ Check-ins6:51
Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale with a Geranium ✓ Check-ins4:54
Wilderness, settlement, and American identity ✓ Check-ins5:59
Before the Civil War, the Mexican-American War as prelude ✓ Check-ins6:40
Jasper Francis Cropsey, Mount Jefferson, Pinkham Notch, White Mountains ✓ Check-ins6:00
John Quincy Adams Ward, The Freedman ✓ Check-ins6:23
1870–1945
The power of the bear and the story an American massacre ✓ Check-ins5:15
The closing of the frontier and The Fall of the Cowboy ✓ Check-ins5:57
Cities and pueblos: the search for an authentic America ✓ Check-ins5:45
Strange Worlds, immigration in the early 20th century ✓ Check-ins5:05
Pottery and tourism: Pueblo culture and the lure of the Southwest ✓ Check-ins6:34
Revisiting the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree ✓ Check-ins6:25
Georgia O'Keeffe, Radiator Building—Night, New York ✓ Check-ins4:58
1945–1980
1980–now
Speaking to past and present, Clarissa Rizal’s Resilience Robe ✓ Check-ins6:20
Wendy Red Star, 1880 Crow Peace Delegation ✓ Check-ins6:41
Reflecting on "We the People" ✓ Check-ins4:15
United States Federal Building and Courthouse, Tuscaloosa ✓ Check-ins4:11
Kerry James Marshall, Now And Forever; Elizabeth Alexander, "American Song," Washington National Cathedral ✓ Check-ins9:57
Unit 2: Theme: Work, Exchange, and Technology
1700-1870
The triangle trade and the colonial table, sugar, tea, and slavery ✓ Check-ins5:33
Dreaming big, Thomas Cole paints 4,500 years of architectural history in The Architect's Dream ✓ Check-ins4:30
Inventing America, Colt's Experimental Pocket Pistol ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip4:34
Heroes of modern surgery: Eakins' Dr. Gross and Dr. Agnew ✓ Check-ins9:04
1870-1939
Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket ✓ Check-ins4:02
Burnham and Root, Reliance Building ✓ Check-ins3:52
Louis Sullivan and the invention of the skyscraper ✓ Check-ins6:46
A show-stopping cut-glass punch bowl ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip4:42
A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC ✓ Check-ins6:36
Going out to the cinema in 1913, John Sloan's Movies ✓ Check-ins4:34
The moment of American Industry: Elsie Driggs, Blast Furnaces, 1927 ✓ Check-ins4:29
A brutal history told for a modern city, Diego Rivera's Sugar Cane ✓ Check-ins7:46
1939-1970
Romare Bearden, Factory Workers ✓ Check-ins5:47
Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter ✓ Check-ins7:16
A mine disaster and those left behind: Ben Shahn's Miner's Wives ✓ Check-ins5:09
Glass Chair at the 1939 New York World's Fair ✓ Check-ins7:07
Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building ✓ Check-ins7:16
Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America ✓ Check-ins5:23
Unit 3: Theme: Geography and the Environment
1000-1875
Clean water for a young Philadelphia ✓ Check-ins5:58
Carleton Watkins and the business of seeing the American west ✓ Check-ins5:07
John James Audubon, The Wild Turkey ✓ Check-ins5:35
The painting that inspired a National Park ✓ Check-ins8:51
Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite, and the battle for National Parks ✓ Check-ins5:41
Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia ✓ Check-ins4:03
Science, religion, and politics, Church's Cotopaxi ✓ Check-ins4:46
Revisiting a frozen sea ✓ Check-ins4:45
1875-1980
- Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket ✓ Check-ins4:02
Before Pennsylvania Station, George Bellows and old New York ✓ Check-ins5:28
The City at night, Joseph Stella's The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted ✓ Check-ins6:40
Alexandre Hogue, Crucified Land ✓ Check-ins5:28
Eldzier Cortor, Southern Landscape ✓ Check-ins4:17
Cars, highways, and isolation in Postwar America ✓ Check-ins5:03
Brummett Echohawk, An Island of Redbuds on the Cimarron ✓ Check-ins5:14
Alma Thomas, Lunar Rendezvous—Circle of Flowers ✓ Check-ins4:03
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty ✓ Check-ins6:51
Alice Aycock, Low Building with Dirt Roof (For Mary) ✓ Check-ins5:08
1980-now
Richard Mayhew, Indigenous Spiritual Space ✓ Check-ins5:15
Inspiration at Yosemite ✓ Check-ins5:21
Toshiko Takaezu, Crater Moon ✓ Check-ins5:18
What's in a map? Jaune Quick-To-See Smith's "State Names" ✓ Check-ins5:03
Desert to Suburb, framing the American Dream ✓ Check-ins4:32
James Turrell, Skyspace, The Way of Color ✓ Check-ins4:41
Mapping nature's stunning beauty ✓ Check-ins4:38
Endangered coastlines and lifeways ✓ Check-ins2:55
Rashid Johnson, Stacked Heads ✓ Check-ins3:55
Maya Lin, Ghost Forest ✓ Check-ins4:30
Beatriz Cortez, Ilopango, The Volcano That Left ✓ Check-ins6:50
Martin Puryear, Lookout ✓ Check-ins5:10
Unit 4: Theme: Migration and Settlement
1700-1860
1860-1910
The Civil War: putting Liberty front and center ✓ Check-ins3:58
Envisioning Manifest Destiny, Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire ✓ Check-ins6:13
Mending America, women and the Civil War ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip5:35
Visiting the Lower East Side in 1905 ✓ Check-ins4:39
The first modern photograph? Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage ✓ Check-ins5:37
1910-now
A magical landscape ✓ Check-ins4:51
American resilience and the Great Depression ✓ Check-ins3:46
Behind the icon, Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother ✓ Check-ins6:53
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (*short version*) ✓ Check-ins5:20
Jamie Wyeth, Kalounna in Frogtown ✓ Check-ins7:23
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Native Hosts ✓ Check-ins6:14- Beatriz Cortez, Ilopango, The Volcano That Left ✓ Check-ins6:50
Unit 5: Theme: Politics and Power
1750-1800
1800-1900
John Wesley Jarvis, Black Hawk and His Son Whirling Thunder ✓ Check-ins5:13
Face to face with the voters: Bingham's Country Politician ✓ Check-ins4:27
The Little Round House at the University of Alabama ✓ Check-ins6:02
Thomas Crawford, George Washington Equestrian Monument ✓ Check-ins6:02
The U.S. Civil War, sharpshooters, and Winslow Homer ✓ Check-ins8:04
Photographing the Battle of Gettysburg, O'Sullivan's Harvest of Death ✓ Check-ins6:22
Anna Pottery, Snake jug ✓ Check-ins5:23
Nast and Reconstruction, understanding a political cartoon final ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip8:59
Martyr or murderer? Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown ✓ Check-ins6:10
Monument Avenue and the Lost Cause ✓ Check-ins6:27
Defeated, heroized, dismantled: Richmond's Robert E. Lee Monument ✓ Check-ins4:40
Custer's Last Stand — from the Lakota perspective ✓ Check-ins6:07
1900-1960
1960-now
Making an icon: JFK and the power of media ✓ Check-ins6:30
Homage to JFK: Rauschenberg's Retroactive I ✓ Check-ins6:21
Stone Mountain, Georgia ✓ Check-ins9:56
Faith Ringgold, Ben ✓ Check-ins4:14
An unflinching memorial to civil rights martyrs, Thornton Dial's Blood and Meat ✓ Check-ins6:18
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice ✓ Check-ins6:39
Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War ✓ Check-ins6:07
Shan Goshorn, Sealed Fate: Treaty of New Echota Protest Basket ✓ Check-ins5:01
Unit 6: Theme: American and Regional Culture
11,000 B.C.E. - 1700 C.E.
1700-1900
Becoming a city: daily life in 1820, Brooklyn ✓ Check-ins6:16
Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable ✓ Check-ins7:20
Two sides of Lakota life on a beaded suitcase ✓ Check-ins6:27
Haida totem pole, from Old Kasaan ✓ Check-ins4:40
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
Paukeigope (Kiowa), Cradleboard ✓ Check-ins6:47
1900-1945
The Chief Johnson Totem Pole ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip10:15
Grant Wood, American Gothic ✓ Check-ins6:20
Cheap Thrills: Coney Island during the Great Depression ✓ Check-ins5:10
Stephen Mopope, Game of Skill ✓ Check-ins6:08
Premonition or memory? George Grosz’s Remembering ✓ Check-ins6:21
Hopper, Nighthawks ✓ Check-ins4:48
1945-1980
Charles Sebree, The Mystic ✓ Check-ins3:46
Norman Lewis, Untitled ✓ Check-ins4:23
A Harlem street scene by Jacob Lawrence, Ambulance Call ✓ Check-ins4:34
Vertis Hayes, Juke Joint ✓ Check-ins5:14
Sari Dienes, Star Circle ✓ Check-ins4:57
Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange) ✓ Check-ins4:23
Rafael Tufiño, La Plena ✓ Check-ins6:32
Rafael Tufiño, Goyita6:49
Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957 ✓ Check-ins5:14
Jess, If All the World Were Paper and All the Water Sink ✓ Check-ins5:47
Fashion and alienation in 1960s New York, Marisol's The Party ✓ Check-ins5:04
Gee's bend, quilting over generations ✓ Check-ins4:36
1980-now
Ruthe Blalock Jones, Medicine Woman ✓ Check-ins6:28
Sam Gilliam, Purpled (Chasers Series) ✓ Check-ins4:58
Masami Teraoka, American Kabuki ✓ Check-ins5:48
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman Feeding Bird), The Kitchen Table Series, 1989-90 ✓ Check-ins4:44
Pepón Osorio, En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) ✓ Check-ins6:50
Turning Uncle Tom's Cabin upside down, Alison Saar's Topsy and the Golden Fleece ✓ Check-ins5:24
Titus Kaphar, The Cost of Removal ✓ Check-ins5:26
Dorica Jackson, Diving Whale Chilkat Robe ✓ Check-ins5:22
Richard Zane Smith, Wyandotte Feast pot4:30
Marilyn Spoon, Bandolier Bag ✓ Check-ins5:56
Unit 7: Theme: Social Structures
1775-1870
Casta paintings: constructing identity in Spanish colonial America ✓ Check-ins5:39
Juana Basilia Sitmelelene, Presentation Basket (Chumash) ✓ Check-ins4:15
An African muslim among the founding fathers, Charles Willson Peale’s Yarrow Mamout ✓ Check-ins5:03
Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York ✓ Check-ins6:27
Slave Burial Ground, University of Alabama ✓ Check-ins4:04
1870-now
Winslow Homer, Taking Sunflower to Teacher ✓ Check-ins4:51
Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags ✓ Check-ins5:01
When department stores were new: women in the American city ✓ Check-ins6:04
Hale Woodruff, The Banjo Player ✓ Check-ins4:47
A beacon of hope, Aaron Douglas's Aspiration ✓ Check-ins7:41
Vertis Hayes, The Lynchers ✓ Check-ins4:42
Thelma Streat, Girl with Bird ✓ Check-ins3:41
Beauford Delaney's portrait of Marian Anderson ✓ Check-ins5:11
Barbara Zucker, Mix, Stir, Pour (White Floor Piece)4:57
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Cleaning the museum—maintenance art ✓ Check-ins5:49
Ben Shahn, Contemporary American Sculpture ✓ Check-ins3:35
Kerry James Marshall, Our Town ✓ Check-ins5:16
Stefanie Jackson, Bluest Eye ✓ Check-ins4:58
Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea ✓ Check-ins4:43
Unit 8: Theme: America in the World
1600–1870
Europe's earliest views of America ✓ Check-ins4:07
Codex Canadensis ✓ Check-ins6:14
A Jewish family in early New York ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip4:33
"We have met the enemy and they are ours." ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip5:20
Hiram S. Powers, The Greek Slave ✓ Check-ins6:14
Cotton, oil, and the economics of history ✓ Check-ins7:15
1870–1980
The New York Obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle ✓ Check-ins6:10
The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty ✓ Check-ins ✎ Fixed a slip6:09
Francisco Oller, Still Life with Plantains and Bananas and Still Life with Coconuts ✓ Check-ins5:00
William F. Cogswell, Queen Lili’uokalani, and Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena, ʻAhu ʻula (The Kalākaua Cape) ✓ Check-ins8:19
Celebrating America's place in the world ✓ Check-ins5:04
Francisco Oller y Cestero, President William McKinley ✓ Check-ins5:33
Winslow Homer, Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba ✓ Check-ins6:16
Armando García Menocal, Campesino y soldado español (Peasant and Spanish soldier) ✓ Check-ins6:22
Cuban cigars, Cuban independence ✓ Check-ins5:33
Jonas Lie, The Conquerors (Culebra Cut, Panama Canal) ✓ Check-ins5:36
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Good Shepherd ✓ Check-ins5:17
Beyond New York — Bellows and World War I ✓ Check-ins4:53
Walter Ufer, Hunger ✓ Check-ins6:27
Rosa Rolanda, Self-Portrait ✓ Check-ins4:59
The Pueblo Modernism of Velino Shije Herrera ✓ Check-ins4:52
1980–now
Superman, World War II, and Japanese-American experience (Roger Shimomura, Diary: December 12, 1941) ✓ Check-ins6:37
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial ✓ Check-ins7:13
Sue Coe, Aids won't wait, the enemy is here not in Kuwait, 1990 ✓ Check-ins4:42
A desert on fire, Salgado photographs Kuwait ✓ Check-ins4:24
History and deception: Kenseth Armstead’s Surrender Yorktown 1781 ✓ Check-ins3:30
Unit 9: American art in context
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