Forging a Nation: The American History Collection at Gilcrease Museum

With essays focused on some of the finest artworks, artifacts, and documents in the Gilcrease Museum collection, Forging a Nation offers a unique examination of early American life. The catalog of artists includes such essential American painters as Charles Willson Peale, John Singleton Copley, Robert Feke, Benjamin West, George Catlin, Alfred Jacob Miller, Emanuel Leutze, John Vanderlyn, William Tylee Ranney, and John Wesley Jarvis. Also included are rare sculptures by Jean Antoine Houdon, Hiram Powers, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens and an extensive array of American archival treasures, including a handwritten transcription of the Declaration of Independence itself.

Forging a Nation examines the national self across time—through the triumphs and tragedies of the Civil War and the violence and inequities involved in the ensuing settlement of the American West. This essential retrospective ends with the closing of the frontier, when the nation was poised at the center of the world stage, its frontiers about to become those of industry, science, technology, and social justice.