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#Arts & Culture

103 entries

People (30)
Aretha Franklin
The voice that carried the church into American popular music, 1942-2018
Babe Ruth
The slugger who remade baseball and became America's first sports superstar
Bessie Smith
The Empress of the Blues and the highest-paid Black entertainer of the 1920s, 1894-1937
Bob Dylan
The folk singer who broke folk music, born 1941
Dorothea Lange
Documentary Photographer Who Gave the Depression a Human Face, 1895–1965
Duke Ellington
The composer who wrote for an orchestra of specific human beings, 1899-1974
Edward Hopper
American light and the painter of Nighthawks, 1882-1967
Elvis Presley
The Memphis truck driver who carried Black Southern music into white America, 1935-1977
Emily Dickinson
Reclusive genius whose poetry redefined American literature — mostly after her death
Emma Lazarus
The poet whose words gave the Statue of Liberty its voice
Ernest Hemingway
Nobel laureate whose spare prose remade American fiction
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chronicler of the Jazz Age and author of the Great American Novel
Frank Lloyd Wright
Organic architecture across seventy years, 1867-1959
Frederick Law Olmsted
The man who invented American landscape architecture, 1822-1903
Georgia O'Keeffe
Skyscrapers, flowers, and the New Mexico desert, 1887-1986
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the novelist who sharpened the nation's conscience on slavery
Jackson Pollock
The poured canvases and the short fame, 1912-1956
James Baldwin
Novelist and essayist who bore witness to race in America with unmatched clarity
James McNeill Whistler
The expatriate who made art about itself, 1834-1903
Langston Hughes
Poet, Playwright, and Voice of the Harlem Renaissance
Louis Armstrong
The trumpeter who turned a collective folk music into an art of the individual voice, 1901-1971
Louis Sullivan
The architect who gave the tall building a form, 1856-1924
Mark Twain
The Mississippi River humorist who became America's sharpest social critic
Norman Rockwell
America's most beloved illustrator — and a more complicated artist than his reputation suggests
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Father of American Transcendentalism and prophet of self-reliance
Sequoyah
Cherokee polymath who invented a writing system and made his nation literate in a single generation
W.E.B. Du Bois
Sociologist, co-founder of the NAACP, and theorist of Black identity in America
Walt Whitman
The poet who gave America a democratic literature and witnessed its bloodiest war
William Randolph Hearst
The publisher who bought his way to a newspaper empire, 1863-1951
Winslow Homer
The painter of the sea, 1836-1910
Places (9)
Hollywood
The Los Angeles district that became the capital of American film
Mount Rushmore
The Black Hills monument that carved four presidents into Lakota sacred land
New York City
America's largest city and the commercial, cultural, and immigrant capital of the nation
Route 66
The "Main Street of America" that carried a nation west
The Chrysler Building
Art Deco's peak and the secret spire, 1930
The Empire State Building
Built in 410 days in the teeth of the Depression, 1931
The Flatiron Building
The wedge at Twenty-third and Broadway, 1902
The White House
The presidential residence that became the symbol of American power
The Woolworth Building
The Cathedral of Commerce, paid for in cash, 1913
Eras (1)
The Roaring Twenties
The decade of prosperity, prohibition, and cultural upheaval that ended in catastrophe, 1920–1929
Events (16)
Apple Pie
An immigrant fruit, a cider economy, and a patriotic slogan invented in the 1920s
Barbecue
Caribbean barbacoa, enslaved pitmasters, and four regional traditions
Flag Day
The June 14 observance marking the adoption of the Stars and Stripes
Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight
The 1927 solo crossing that made Charles Lindbergh a global icon
Pumpkin Pie
From Native squash to the canned filling that fixed a national recipe
The Armory Show
American audiences meet European modernism, February 1913
The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show
The 1964 broadcast that launched the British Invasion
The Birth of a Nation
D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic — cinematic landmark and racist propaganda
The Hamburger
Contested origins, the 1904 fair, and the rehabilitation of ground beef
The Harlem Renaissance
The explosion of Black art, literature, and music that redefined American culture, 1920–1940
The Hot Dog
German butchers, Coney Island, the ballpark, and fiercely local rules
The Pulitzer Prize
American journalism's definition of itself, first awarded 1917
The WPA Federal Art Project
The government as art patron, 1935-1943
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The 1852 novel that turned a generation against slavery
Woodstock
The 1969 festival that became the emblem of the counterculture
World's Columbian Exposition
Chicago's 1893 "White City" and the showcase of an industrial America
Concepts (23)
Abstract Expressionism
The New York School and the moment the center moved
American Art
A colony that imported its taste and a republic that had to invent one
American Dream
The belief that effort and merit guarantee opportunity in America
American Exceptionalism
The conviction that the United States occupies a unique and exemplary place in world history
American Food
How Indigenous crops, forced labor, immigration, and industry built a continental cuisine
American Media
How the nation learned to inform, persuade, and entertain itself
American Music
How a country assembled a sound out of Africa, Europe, and the South
Country Music
From Appalachian string bands to the Bristol sessions and Nashville
Gospel Music
The music of the Black church and the training ground of soul
Hip-Hop
From a 1973 Bronx block party to the dominant popular form
Jazz
The New Orleans art of improvisation that became America's chief export
Motown
Berry Gordy's Detroit hit factory and the sound of young America
Ragtime
The syncopated piano craze that ran from the 1890s to the First World War
Rock and Roll
The mid-1950s collision of rhythm and blues with country
Soul Food
West African foodways, plantation rations, and a cuisine the Great Migration carried north
Sports in America
How games became one of the nation's great stages for race, money, and identity
Tex-Mex
Tejano kitchens, the chili queens of San Antonio, and the combination plate
The Ashcan School
Tenements, prizefights, and the revolt against the academy
The Blues
The Delta form that became the taproot of American popular music
The Counterculture of the 1960s
The cultural rebellion that challenged postwar conformity and permanently altered American life
The Hudson River School
Landscape as national identity, 1825-1880
The Lost Cause
The Confederate mythology that rewrote the Civil War — and shaped a century of American race relations
Transcendentalism
The New England movement that gave America its philosophy of individual conscience
Organizations (19)
CBS
The Tiffany Network, from Murrow to Cronkite, founded 1927
Coca-Cola
The Atlanta soda that became a global symbol of America, 1886
Life Magazine
The picture weekly that showed America to itself, 1936-1972
NBC
The first permanent broadcast network, founded 1926
PBS
The public television network of Sesame Street and the news, founded 1969
The American Museum of Natural History
New York's temple of dinosaurs, dioramas, and science, founded 1869
The Ford Foundation
The philanthropy that spread American ideas at home and abroad, 1936
The Library of Congress
The national library that rose from ashes on Jefferson's shelves, 1800
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
America's grandest art museum, founded 1870
The Museum of Modern Art
The museum that made modern art respectable, founded 1929
The National Archives
The keeper of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the nation's records, 1934
The National Gallery of Art
The nation's art museum, a gift to the people, 1937
The National Geographic Society
The society that brought the world to America, founded 1888
The NCAA
The body that governs — and profits from — college sports, 1906
The New York Public Library
The people's library guarded by two stone lions, founded 1895
The Smithsonian Institution
The national museum complex born from a mysterious English bequest, 1846
The USO
The troops' morale organization, from WWII canteens to today, 1941
The YMCA
The Christian association that shaped American recreation and reform, since 1851
Time Magazine
The newsmagazine that summarized the week, founded 1923
Symbols (4)
National Symbols of the United States
The flag, the eagle, and the emblems that stand in for the nation
The Bald Eagle
The national bird and living emblem of the United States
The Star-Spangled Banner
The poem written during a battle that became the national anthem
Uncle Sam
The white-bearded personification of the United States government
Technology (1)
Radio
The medium that first brought live voices into the American home
All Tags
Politics 178 Economy 171 Military 129 Reform 121 Civil Rights 118 Law & Justice 116 Presidency 113 Science & Technology 112 Foreign Policy 107 Arts & Culture 103 Race 98 Founding Era 96 Industry 90 Constitution 75 Modern America 67 Protest 66 Cold War 65 Civil War 62 Westward Expansion 61 War 59 Revolution 59 Slavery 57 Media & Press 57 Women 56 Indigenous 51 Diplomacy 47 Immigration 41 Labor 40 Environment 36 Colonial America 34 Congress 33 Religion 33 World War II 32 Supreme Court 32 Disaster 29 Exploration 27 Public Health 25 Progressive Era 25 Abolition 22 Finance 22 Reconstruction 22 Democracy 20 Gilded Age 19 Assassination 15 Education 15 Suffrage 11 World War I 9 Sports 9 Corruption 9 Prohibition 1