The NBMAA collection represents the major artists and movements of American art. Today it numbers over 8,000 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs, including the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, which features important works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, and Maxfield Parrish.
Among collection highlights are colonial and federal portraits, with examples by John Smibert, John Trumbull, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and the Peale family. The Hudson River School features landscapes by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Still life painters range from Raphaelle Peale, Severin Roesen, William Harnett, John Peto, John Haberle, and John La Farge. American genre painting is represented by John Quidor, William Sidney Mount, and Lilly Martin Spencer. Post-Civil War examples include works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, George de Forest Brush, and William Paxton, and 19 plasters and bronzes by Solon Borglum. American Impressionists include Mary Cassatt, Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf, and Childe Hassam, the last represented by eleven oils. Later Impressionist paintings include those by Ernest Lawson, Frederck Frieseke, Louis Ritman, Robert Miller, and Maurice Prendergast.
Other strengths of the twentieth-century collection include: sixty works by members of the Ash Can School; significant representation by early modernists such as Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber; important examples by the Precisionists Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Preston Dickinson, and Ralston Crawford; a broad spectrum of work by the Social Realists Ben Shahn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Levine; and ambitious examples of Regionalist painting by Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton, notably the latter’s celebrated five-panel mural, The Arts of Life in America (1932).
Works by the American Abstract Artist group (Stuart Davis, Ilya Bolotowsky, Esphyr Slobodkina, Balcomb Greene, and Milton Avery) give twentieth-century abstraction its place in the collection, as do later examples of Surrealism by artists Kay Sage and George Tooker; Abstract Expressionism (Lee Krasner, Giorgio Cavallon, Morris Graves, Robert Motherwell, Sam Francis, Cleve Gray), Pop and Op art (Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine), Conceptual (Christo, Sol LeWitt), and Photo-Realism (Robert Cottingham). Examples of twentieth-century sculpture include Harriet Frishmuth, Paul Manship, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, and Stephen DeStaebler. We continue to acquire contemporary works by notable artists, in order to best represent the dynamic and evolving narrative of American art.Browsing the Online Collection
There are a few ways to browse the Online Collection:
Homepage/Collections
On the homepage, you can browse curated selections from our collection.
Exhibitions Page
On the exhibitions page, you can browse information about our exhibitions, and view artworks from each exhibition.
People Page
On the people page, you can browse individuals and/or institutions related to objects in the collection, along with relevant biographies and objects.
Community Favorites
On the Favorites page, you can browse user-created collections. You can add your own favorites to Community Favorites by registering on the site and creating sets that are marked "public".
Searching the Online Collection
Quick Search/Advanced Search
Enter keywords or names in the search box (Quick Search) to find objects or other records in our collection. To search on specific criteria, you can use the advanced search to search within certain data fields. You can search using multiple criteria, such as the term "portrait" in the title + a date range of "1800-1900". If you are not getting any results with advanced search, try broadening your search by removing criteria.
Search Tips
- You can use an * (asterisk) as a wildcard in searches, to match partial terms (e.g. draw* will return results for draw, drawn, drawings, etc.)
- Use quotation marks to get more exact results - e.g. John Doe will return any results with John or Doe, but "John Doe" will return results with this exact phrase.
Viewing Search Results
Types of Results
There are different types of search results, such as object records and people records. When there is more than one type of result, you can choose different types of records to view.
GRID/LIST VIEWS
You can view a set of results in an image grid or list view. Use the dropdown to switch between different types of views.
Filters
You can refine a result set by using filters to narrow down results. For example, you can filter to see only works that have images within any result set. You can also clear each filter to revert to a larger result set, or clear all filters to get to your original result set.
Images
Why is an image shown as not available?
An image may be shown as not available if it is not yet available in our database, or if it cannot be displayed for copyright reasons.
Favorites
What Are Favorites?
Favorites allows you to create your own sets from the collection objects available on this site. You can share your Favorites with others, or create sets of artworks for your own viewing (Favorites are private by default).
You can optionally add a description for each Favorites set. You can view your collection sets by going to the "Favorites" page and logging into your account.
How Do I Use Favorites?
To use Favorites, you must first register an account. Once you have completed registration, you can start creating Favorites sets and adding artworks to them.
You can add artworks to your sets by clicking on the heart symbol while viewing objects, and selecting which set to add the artwork(s). After selection, you can choose to add all selected works on the page to a Favorite. You can also add the entire result set or all objects on a page.
How Do I Share a Favorite With Someone Else?
If you mark your Favorites set public, this Favorite will be visible to others in the Community Favorites section. The option to mark a set as public is available when you edit your Favorite.
After setting a Favorite set as public, you can also share the link to allow others to view your set.
