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National Endowment for Humanities Helping Students Picture America

Grant Wood's iconic painting of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” (1931) is just one of the 40 reproductions of classic artworks provided to HISD schools through the Picturing America initiative. The program was designed to inspire students to think about history and culture from a different perspective through the examination of art.

High-quality reproductions of iconic American artworks—such as Grant Wood’s painting “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” (pictured), Alexander Gardner’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Hart Benton’s mural depicting “The Sources of Country Music”—are now gracing the hallways and libraries of dozens of HISD campuses, thanks to materials they received from the National Endowment for the Humanities, through the Picturing America initiative.

About 80 district schools have received the reproductions since distribution began in 2008, with more than 56,000 sets going to schools and public libraries nationwide.

Picturing America was designed to inspire students to think about American history and culture from a different perspective, and to explore the themes of leadership, equality, democracy, and more through the examination of 40 classic art pieces, dating from the twelfth century through the late-1900s.

To learn more about Picturing America, or to see a gallery of the artworks or a complete list of HISD schools that received the reproductions, click the links above.