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Perspectives Spotlight

Questioning Cole’s Romantic Wilderness

“The perception of America as an uninhabited wilderness is, in its own way, a historical fiction.” – Alan C. Braddock, professor and ecocritic

A detail from Thomas Cole's landscape painting
Thomas Cole's landscape painting

Reexamining the Wilderness Aesthetic

What’s missing from Cole’s environmentalism is the idea of justice
By Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Alan C. Braddock Apr 6, 2022
Indigenous American climate justice activist Xiye Bastida shouts into a megaphone in front of a large-scale protest

The Importance of Reciprocity

Climate justice activist Xiye Bastida’s perspectives are brought to bear on Thomas Cole’s iconic landscape painting The Oxbow.

Apr 6, 2022

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A small bronze sculpture of a seated boy pulling a thorn from the bottom of his foot appears set against a bright yellow ovular spotlight shape in the background.

Spinario’s Thorn

What can Antico’s small, bronze sculpture teach us about pain, mindfulness, and the creative process?
Brown and beige fragment of a floor mosaic with a brown-skinned woman with curly brown hair, a headpiece, and earrings set against a bright yellow ovular spotlight shape in the background.

The Personification of Ktisis

What does this mosaic reveal about representation in the Byzantine world?
Detail of a Honus Wagner baseball card, showing his face against an orange background, with a bright yellow ovular spotlight shape behind the figure in the background

Baseball Card Collecting’s “Holy Grail”

Why is the Honus Wagner card so valuable, and what can it tell us about the history of commerce, marketing, and consumerism?
An ancient Egyptian seated statue of Hatshepsut in limestone, with a bright yellow ovular spotlight shape behind the figure in the background

The King Herself

A conversation on gender, power, and erasure

Related

Cover of MetPublication
MetPublications

Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings

Preparatory drawing of a river bend for
MetPublications

“The Oxbow by Thomas Cole: Iconography of an American Landscape Painting”: Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 17 (1982)

Detail of a painting of a cloud with the text
Video

Thomas Cole: A Closer Look

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