The visual art history of what is now the United States begins long before European contact. These earliest indigenous artistic expressions, dating back thousands of years, include rock art, pottery, weaving, sculpture, and ceremonial objects that were intricately tied to spiritual, social, and environmental contexts. With the arrival of Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the death and destruction that followed, Indigenous artists were forced to adapt and assimilate.

Yet despite the circumstances, their art flourished, including pottery revival movements, beadwork, leatherwork, and ledger art among Plains tribes, especially in the 19th century. The European colonists and settlers established their own artistic practices. They introduced portraiture, history painting, and landscape genres to articulate emergent colonial and republican identities. By the mid-19th century, distinct American artistic movements were being created in succession, alongside national expansion and social transformation.

And so today, we'll take a look at how American art up to 1900 has been a complex interplay of Indigenous creativity, colonial European traditions, and an evolving national culture.