Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba

Winslow Homer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Homer revisited his 1885 drawings of Morro Castle following the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War. In the resulting canvas, he focused on an electric searchlight used by the U.S. Navy to prevent the Spanish fleet from escaping Santiago harbor until they could be defeated. The artist offers a striking juxtaposition between the dim, antiquated cannons of the Spanish monument and the searchlight’s powerful rays. Framing the conflict in symbolic, disembodied terms, Homer perhaps implied a sense of U.S. technological superiority and imperial ascendancy. Meanwhile, only a small section of Cuban shoreline is illuminated at right, reflecting the ways the colonial power struggle eclipsed what had been a long, local fight for independence. Homer’s modern history painting appears to brood on these unequal power dynamics without offering a clear resolution.

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