The Alternative of WIlliams-Burg

The Alternative of WIlliams-Burg

Philip Dawe

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This political satire published in London shows rough looking "Sons of Liberty" at Williamsburg, Virginia urging planters to sign a pledge of loyalty to anti-British actions passed by the Continental Congress. After the Boston Tea party of December 1773, the British parliament passed the "Intolerable Acts" that imposed further duties on their American colonies. In August 1774 the Williamsburg Resolutions were issued in response and local planters were pressured to stop exporting tobacco until the new taxes are repealed. Those reluctant to do so are here threatened with being tarred and feathered, with those elements hanging from a gibbet in the background.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.