"What Are You Laughing At? To the Victor Belong the Spoils" (from "Harper's Weekly," vol. 15, p. 1097)

Thomas Nast

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York’s famously corrupt politician William M. "Boss" Tweed appears here as a defeated Roman soldier. Nast’s critical satires of Tweed appeared regularly in Harper’s Weekly and helped persuade New York voters to oust the Democrats in November 1871. This ended Tweed’s corrupt leadership of Tammany Hall—a political machine that embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars over three years and bribed critics into silence. Nast compares the defeated Tweed to the Roman consul Caius Marius, exiled in disgrace to the ruined city of Carthage. Wearing a crown of dollar signs, a gouty Tweed leans on an empty treasury box, grips a broken sword, and glares in defiant disbelief.

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