Theme

The Arts

Featured Items

Detail of an embroidered cloth book binding shows letters "JHS" in gold and green beads.

[Abecedario]

1813
Detail of an engraved, hand colored print shows portrait of Hendrick, a Mohawk chief.

The brave old Hendrick the great Sachem or Chief of the Mohawk Indians...

1740
Detail of a printed book shows a portrait frontispiece of Phillis Wheatley sitting at a table with a quill in her hand in the process of writing.

Poems on various subjects, religious and moral

Phillis Wheatley
1773
Detail of a printed text shows a large, leafy tree. Labels printed below.

Museum Museorum

Michael Bernhard Valentini
1704
Detail of a printed book shows a full-page colored illustration of a plant with insects on it. On the opposite page, text in Latin is visible.

Dissertatio de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum Surinamensium

Maria Sibylla Merian
1719
Detail of a printed book shows worn papers and header text reading "An Anagram. Anna Bradestreate" and other text in English.

The tenth muse lately sprung up in America

Anne Bradstreet
1650
Detail of a printed book shows a decorated title page depicting an illustration of Sor Juana, angels, indigenous people, and text in Spanish and Latin.

Fama, y obras posthumas del Fenix de Mexico

Juana Inés de la Cruz
1700
Detail of a hand colored lithograph shows enslaved Black people planting sugar cane in an open field.

[Post-emancipation Life]

Ladies' Society for Promoting the Early Education of Negro Children
1833-1837

Related

Native Americans of present-day Mexico dance around two drummers

Picturing the Past: Indigenous Expressions in Colonial Mexico

Spring 2020
image of an open book with a colorful image of insects on a tropical plant and printed text

By a Lady: Women and Natural History in the Americas, 1650-1830

September 2019
scene of sugar cane planting

Sugar and the Visual Imagination in the Atlantic World, circa 1600-1860

Fall 2013
Our Fellows

Daniel Ruppel, J.M. Stuart Fellow

June 1, 2017

See Also

History of Science

Caribbean