The Falls of Niagara

Edward Hicks

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hicks visited Niagara Falls in 1819, but he based this composition on a vignette of the falls from a map of North America published by Henry S. Tanner in 1822. As seen from the Canadian side, the falls are replete with the moose, beaver, rattlesnake and eagle, all traditional emblems of North America. The long poem inscribed around the picture is an excerpt from Alexander Wilson's "The Foresters" that originally appeared as a serial in the Philadelphia periodical "The Port Folio" in 1809–1810 and was reprinted at Newtown, Pennsylvania in 1818. Another version of this subject by Hicks was painted in 1835 (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia).

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art