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Overview: Prosperity for All?

America was founded on the principles of equality, freedom, liberty, and respect for individual rights. But these ideals have not always applied to everyone, and many Americans have fought since the founding of this country to broaden those values so that they apply to all Americans.

Overview: The Price of Progress

The notion that innovation and change leads to progress is at the heart of the American character, but Americans also value tradition. This unit explores a wide range of traditions and innovations in American society. When is progress worth the loss of tradition and certain ways of life?

Large wooden wardrobe with panels, each with a border of red, green or black and painted decoration simulating the look of wood grain; drawers across bottom and cornice at top.

Object Story: Painted Schrank

This wardrobe holds important clues about the identity of an early Pennsylvania family.

Painting of white woman in voluminous grey dress with white sash and large locket around her neck seated before a window holding a prayer book and looking at the viewer.

Object Story: Portrait of Elizabeth Stone Coffin

Portrait of Elizabeth Stone Coffin painted by John Brewster Jr. in 1801.

Everybody Collects

The kinds of objects, artifacts, and artworks that people collect communicate different ideas.  They can be a record of events that happened in society.

Doing Detective Work

Being a historian or archaeologist is a lot like being a detective. You start out with clues, which are pieces of evidence that people leave behind.

Folk Art, Vernacular Art, or Naïve Art?

Many of the objects in the Fielding Collection such as Still Life with a Basket of Fruit, Flowers, and Cornucopia attributed to Joseph Proctor are often considered “folk art.”  Some people prefer to use related terms like “naïve,” “vernacular,” or “nonacademic” instead of “folk.”  All of these terms describe work by artists who may not have had extensive, formal training or decided not to follow the teachings and ideas of traditional art instruction.

View of eight quilts displayed in a museum gallery with a spinning wheel placed in the center of the room.

Object Story: Stitching Statements and Sentiments

Explore quilt patterns that reflect women’s perspectives on the world and current events.

Print on paper showing arrangement of squares; within each square there are strips of colored rectangles that are arranged asymmetrically in shades of red, blue, white, and black.

Object Story: African American Quilting

Contemporary African American quilt traditions and their transformation into new artforms.

Five glass toy lamps in a variety of shapes, three with feet and bulbous or V-shaped reservoirs, another in a shape resembling a teacup, and another in the shape of a oval sphere.

Object Story: Toy Lamps

Blown glass lamps made for burning whale oil.

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