Pieces

Negro day laborers brought in by truck from nearby towns waiting to be paid off for cotton picking and buy supplies inside plantation store. Friday night, Marcella Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi

By: Marion Post Wolcott, American, 1910 - 1990

Between 1938 and 1942, Marion Post Wolcott traveled thousands of miles as a photographer for the federal government’s Farm Security Administration, taking more than 9,000 photographs documenting the lives of Americans hardest hit by the Great Depression. This is one of a group of images made by Wolcott to chronicle the lives of cotton pickers in the Mississippi Delta. Captured in a moment of repose, the image does not give a sense of the backbrea…

Pieces

Six of the Most Approved Methods of Appearing Ridiculous on the Ice

By: Possibly, George Cruikshank, British, born London 1792 - died 1878, London

Pieces

“Heathen Chinee” Pitcher

By: Designed by, Karl L. H. Müller, American, born Germany, about 1820 - 1887@Manufactured by, Union Porcelain Works, United States, 1863 - about 1922

…popular Bret Harte poem of 1870, chronicling life in California’s rough-and-tumble mining camps. The pitcher is a decorated with an unusual combination of motifs: the Flemish King Gambrinus, patron saint of beer, is paired with Brother Jonathan, the symbolic forerunner of Uncle Sam, while the figures of Bill Nye and Ah Sin are characters from “The Heathen Chinee.” In the poem, although Nye and Ah Sin are equally guilty of cheating at cards, Nye at…

Pieces

Statue of George Washington

By: Engraved by, Angelo Bertini, Italy, born 1783 - unknown death date@After a drawing by, Giovanni Tognoli, Italy, 1786 - 1862@From the original sculpture by, Antonio Canova, Italy, 1757 - 1822

…fayette, Washington’s close friend and brother in arms, saw the statue and approved of the “exquisite workmanship of the whole,” but privately believed the sculpture failed to capture Washington’s true likeness. An 1840 lithograph depicts Lafayette’s visit to the State House, accompanied by Betsey Haywood, daughter of State Treasurer John Haywood, his host. While the two admire the monument, a recumbent boy—pen in hand—draws on its pedestal, emula…