“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow

“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow

Utagawa Hiroshige II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Yokohama prints, created to memorialize the arrival of foreigners in Japan in the mid-1850s, Americans were generally visualized in two different ways: either in fanciful representations of Native Americans, as seen here, or as elaborately garbed white aristocrats. Such stereotypes were created when artists, lacking direct experience of foreigners, relied on visual information through unreliable sources such as newspaper cartoons and other printed ephemera.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.