The Museum for American Studies

Learn more

• Learn more about American history, American Indians, artists, biographies, culture, folk arts, Grant Wood, movie theatres, natural history, ornithology, portraits, world's fair 1893, and world's fair 1939-40.

Legal

This collection of exhibits is part of the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia.

Exhibits included in the site are:
• Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands “This electronic version of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands is divided into two volumes, following Catesby’s own organization of his work. Readers can browse each volume or go directly to specific entries from the contents pages. Another way to navigate this etext is through the Linnaean index.”
• Edward Curtis: Selling the North American Indian “Between 1907 and 1930, Edward Curtis completed his 20 volume series of photographs and ethnographic descriptions, The North American Indian. Initially, this monumental project garnered a lot of national attention and the support of such men as Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan…This site will examine this trajectory, from Curtis’s developing interest in the project, to the ways that he promoted it at the height of its popularity, to the falling off of interest in the late teens and 1920s.”
• Singular Visions: Folk Art from Charlottesville Collections “The artists’ personal convictions and the singular visions expressed in the works on exhibition here take many forms, ranging from apocryphal exhortations to humorous depictions of daily events. Most of all, they expand our accepted notions of how we define art.”
• The Armory Show of 1913 “Lauded as one of the most influential events in the history of American art, the Armory Show has a mythic legacy that rivals the raucous opening of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite of Spring in Paris. In the wake of previous large independent art exhibitions in France, Germany, Italy, and England, from February 17th to March 15th, 1913, New York’s 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th streets was home to approximately 1250 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 European and American artists.”
• Seescapes & Soundscapes of the 1930s “Seeks to describe one kind of American cultural landscape of the 1930s, the mental landscape many individuals carried around in their heads, placed there by the popular films, cartoons and comic strips, radio programs, and documentary works of theperiod.” Note: Both audio and video files can be downloaded using Real player.
• Going back to Iowa: The World of Grant Wood ” Going back to Iowa, for Grant Wood, was the formative experience in his artistic life. It was the return to his home state that prompted his painting to take a distinctive turn--towards regionalism, towards American subjects, towards the nineteenth century, towards an affectionate and yet ironic vision of his country and its history.”
• Negotiating the American Identity in the National Portrait Gallery “This site will explain how and why the National Portrait Gallery uses the portraits of famous Americans to construct its particular and “official” history of American culture.”
• Alexander Wilson, American Ornithologist Between 1808 and 1812, Alexander Wilson produced the first American ornithological record.
• The 1939 - 1940 Worlds Fair Examines the social, cultural, and commercial impact of the Fair on the American way of life in the twentieth century.
• American Picture Palaces: American culture of 1910 - 1940
• The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893) explores the Exposition through a virtual tour, investigates visitors’ reaction to the Fair and analyzes the social, political, and cultural legacies of the World Columbian Exposition.
• Erastus Salisbury Field: A Yankee Seer ” a so-called ‘primitive’ painter from rural New England renowned both for his evocative portraits and his imaginative mythological, Biblical,and historical canvases “