Bar Thuldy's Statue: Liberty Frightenin de World

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This racially caricatured "Statue of Liberty" was created as an advertisement for United States Mutual Accident Association. The imagery derives from an 1884 Currier & Ives lithograph, part of their Darktown series where offensive racial stereotypes are applied to Black subjects. That the firm issued so many works of this type demonstrates how commonplace racist imagery was in nineteenth-century American culture. It is hoped that by studying the context that produced such images, today's viewers will work to minimize discrimination, stereotyping and intolerance.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art