News
Rare 19th-Century Silhouette Album’s Secrets Unlocked
Traveling portrait artist William Bache’s album depicts famous figures like Thomas Jefferson as well as people whose identity was previously unknown.
19th century American art
Art
Resurrecting the First World’s Fair in the US Through Its Relics
A Bard Graduate Center exhibition reassembles the forgotten history of New York's 1853–54 Crystal Palace through rare artifacts.
Art
Library of Congress Digitizes 19th-Century Photos of Black Women Activists
The Library of Congress recently digitized rare 19th-century photographs of African American women active in suffrage, civil rights, temperance, education, reform, and journalism.
Art
Paintings of New York at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Festering Sewers and All
In the 1870s, New York tinsmith William Chappel painted nearly 30 views of the city of his childhood, when peddlers hawked their wares, whale oil illuminated the night, and fresh water was a scarcity.
News
A 12,000-Pound Panorama of a Civil War Battle Is Lifted into Its New Home
The colossal 19th-century painting of the Battle of Atlanta has been hailed as a tribute to both the North and South, and its complicated history will be a focus in its new home at the Atlanta History Center.
Art
Conserving America's Longest Painting, a 19th-Century Whaling Panorama
The New Bedford Whaling Museum is working to put the 1,275-foot "Whaling Voyage Round the World" panorama back on view.
Art
The Victorian-era Daguerrotypes of Women Breastfeeding
In the 19th century, just after the daguerreotype's introduction in the United States, there was a fashionable moment for portraits of women breastfeeding.
Art
Why Frederick Douglass Was the Most Photographed 19th-Century American
In a lifelong battle against racist imagery, Frederick Douglass had over 160 portraits taken, which he hoped would create a public acknowledgment of his humanity.
Art
Revisiting America’s Dead in Posthumous Portraits from the 19th Century
The 19th century saw the rise of the posthumous portrait when, through photographs and paintings, people preserved the faces of departed loved ones.
Art
Researchers Unroll a Rare 19th-Century Painted Panorama
One of the longest paintings ever created is an 1848 depiction of a "whaling voyage 'round the world" that stretches 1,275 feet — roughly the length of 14 blue whales, according to its holder, the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
In Brief
Met Envy Apparently Fueled National Gallery of Art's Interest in Corcoran
The chief of exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art told a philanthropist that absorbing the failing Corcoran would make "his collection at the National Gallery ... greater than the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”