U.S. Art History: Civil War Monuments, Western Expansion, and Indigenous Perspectives

Reconstruction

Definition: The period after the Civil War (1865-1877) when the United States attempted to reunify the country and establish freedom and citizenship rights for formerly enslaved African Americans.

Example: Thomas Ball's Freedmen's Memorial to Abraham Lincoln (1876).

Significance: The monument commemorates emancipation but raises questions about whether African Americans are represented as active participants in their liberation.

Jim Crow Laws

Definition: Laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans, particularly in the South.

Example: Antonin Mercié's Robert E. Lee Monument (1890).

Significance: The monument was erected during the rise of Jim Crow, connecting Confederate commemoration to the reassertion of white Southern political power.

Civil War Monuments

Definition: Public memorials commemorating people, events, or sacrifices associated with the American Civil War.

Examples: Thomas Ball's Freedmen's Memorial (1876) and Antonin Mercié's Robert E. Lee Monument (1890).

Significance: These monuments communicate different interpretations of the war, emphasizing emancipation or Confederate military leadership.

Monuments Exhibition

Definition: A 2026 exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles examining the changing meanings of public monuments, particularly those associated with contested histories.

Example: Fragments and melted-down material from Robert E. Lee monuments.

Significance: The exhibition demonstrates how monuments can be removed, transformed, and reinterpreted.

Monumental Bronze Company

Definition: A Northern manufacturer based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that mass-produced monuments, including Confederate memorials.

Example: Bertie County Confederate Monument (1896).

Significance: Sarah Beetham uses monument manufacturing to challenge the idea that Confederate monuments were uniquely Southern artistic creations.

Frederick Douglass

Definition: An African American abolitionist, writer, and political leader who advocated for emancipation and equal rights.

Example: His criticism of Thomas Ball's Freedmen's Memorial.

Significance: Douglass argued that the monument did not tell the complete story of emancipation and raised questions about African American agency.

Abraham Lincoln

Definition: U.S. president during the Civil War who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

Example: Thomas Ball's Freedmen's Memorial to Abraham Lincoln (1876).

Significance: The monument celebrates Lincoln's role in emancipation while raising questions about how African American participation is represented.

Robert E. Lee

Definition: Confederate general during the American Civil War.

Example: Antonin Mercié's Robert E. Lee Monument (1890).

Significance: The monument celebrated Confederate military leadership, while its removal in 2021 demonstrates changing interpretations of Confederate public memory.

The American West

Definition: Both a geographic region and a cultural idea shaped by expansion, migration, conquest, and artistic representation.

Example: Emanuel Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1862).

Significance: The mural portrays westward migration as national progress and helped construct an idealized image of the West.

Frontier

Definition: The imagined boundary between established American settlements and territories being incorporated through westward expansion.

Example: Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1862).

Significance: The mural presents settlers moving westward as part of American civilization and progress.

Settler Colonialism

Definition: A process in which settlers establish permanent control over Indigenous territories through settlement, dispossession, and displacement.

Example: Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1862).

Significance: The mural celebrates expansion while minimizing Indigenous presence, illustrating how art could justify territorial conquest.

Cartography

Definition: The practice of creating and studying maps.

Example: Government-sponsored western surveys, including the Hayden Geological Survey.

Significance: Mapping helped produce geographic knowledge and supported exploration, territorial administration, and westward expansion.

Landscape Painting

Definition: An artistic genre focused on representing natural environments.

Example: Thomas Moran's Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872).

Significance: Moran used dramatic scale, color, and composition to communicate Yellowstone's grandeur and shape public perceptions of the American West.

Photography

Definition: The process of creating images by recording light on a photosensitive surface.

Example: William Henry Jackson's Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1871).

Significance: Photography documented western landscapes during scientific expeditions and helped Americans visualize distant territories.

Hayden Geological Survey

Definition: A federally supported scientific expedition led by Ferdinand V. Hayden that explored Yellowstone in 1871.

Examples: Thomas Moran's Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) and William Henry Jackson's Yellowstone photographs.

Significance: Scientific research and visual documentation contributed to public interest in Yellowstone and its establishment as a national park.

Ferdinand V. Hayden

Definition: American geologist who led government-sponsored scientific expeditions in the American West.

Example: The 1871 Hayden Geological Survey of Yellowstone.

Significance: His expedition combined scientific exploration with artistic and photographic documentation of western landscapes.

William Henry Jackson

Definition: American photographer who documented western landscapes during government scientific expeditions.

Example: Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1871).

Significance: His photographs helped communicate Yellowstone's geological features and contributed to scientific knowledge and public perceptions of the West.

Thomas Moran

Definition: American landscape painter known for dramatic representations of western scenery. Example: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872).

Significance: His painting emphasized Yellowstone's grandeur and helped shape American national identity through representations of western nature.

Ledger Drawings

Definition: Drawings created by Plains Indigenous artists on paper, often taken from accounting books, continuing earlier traditions of visual storytelling.

Example: Cohoe's Fort Marion Prisoners Dancing for Tourists (1875-77).

Significance: The drawing demonstrates how Indigenous artists adapted traditional visual storytelling to new materials while documenting their experiences.

Fort Marion Prisoners

Definition: Native Americans from several Plains nations incarcerated by the U.S. government at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, during the 1870s.

Example: Cohoe's Fort Marion Prisoners Dancing for Tourists (1875-77).

Significance: The artwork documents Indigenous experiences during imprisonment and demonstrates the continuation of artistic traditions under confinement.

Survivance

Definition: The active continuation of Indigenous cultures through resistance, adaptation, cultural expression, and continued presence despite colonization.

Example: Cohoe's drawings created while imprisoned at Fort Marion.

Significance: His work demonstrates cultural continuity and Indigenous agency despite imprisonment by the U.S. government.

Cohoe (Cheyenne)

Definition: A Cheyenne artist imprisoned at Fort Marion who created drawings during the 1870s.

Example: Fort Marion Prisoners Dancing for Tourists (1875-77).

Significance: His drawings document experiences of captivity and demonstrate Indigenous artistic expression and cultural continuity.

Mathó Nážiŋ (Standing Bear) (Lakota)

Definition: A Lakota artist who represented Indigenous historical experiences.

Example: The Battle of the Little Bighorn (c. 1920), created on muslin.

Significance: His artwork provides an Indigenous perspective on the 1876 battle and demonstrates how Native American artists preserved their own histories.

The West as America Exhibition

Definition: A 1991 exhibition at the National Museum of American Art titled The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920.

Example: The exhibition's controversial wall labels, discussed in Showdown at "The West as America" Exhibition.

Significance: The exhibition challenged romanticized frontier narratives and sparked debate about political interpretation in museums.

*Manifest Destiny

Definition: The nineteenth-century belief that the United States was destined or justified to expand across North America. Example: Emanuel Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1862). Significance: The mural portrays western migration as heroic national progress, visually reinforcing the ideology of American expansion.

*Public Memory

Definition: The way societies collectively remember and interpret historical events through monuments, museums, and commemorations. Example: Antonin Mercié's Robert E. Lee Monument (1890). Significance: The monument celebrated a Confederate general, while its removal in 2021 demonstrates how interpretations of history can change.

*Agency

Definition: The ability of individuals or groups to act independently and influence their own circumstances. Example: John Quincy Adams Ward's The Freedman (1863). Significance: The sculpture depicts a formerly enslaved man rising from bondage, emphasizing his strength and active role in freedom.

*The Sublime

Definition: An aesthetic experience of overwhelming grandeur, power, or scale that inspires awe and sometimes fear. Example: Thomas Moran's Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872). Significance: The painting's dramatic scale and immense landscape communicate the extraordinary power and beauty of nature.

*Ideology

Definition: A system of beliefs and values that shapes how people understand society, politics, and history. Example: Emanuel Leutze's Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (1862). Significance: The mural communicates the ideology of westward expansion by presenting American settlement as heroic national progress.

*Curatorial Interpretation

Definition: The process through which museum curators select, organize, and explain artworks to communicate particular meanings. Example: The wall labels in the 1991 West as America exhibition. Significance: The controversial labels demonstrate how museums can challenge traditional historical narratives through interpretations of art.