During the Depression, the federal government urged Americans to visit the country’s natural wonders.

The most iconic image from the Great Depression centers on rural poverty—but then, as now, the misery of homelessness was compounded in America’s cities.

Heartbreak defines the human experience. And nothing can break your heart like your own country.

Harnessing the power of the humble hole punch, to either create narratives or deflate them.

A visit to the juke joints in the Florida Everglades where migrant laborers could go to relax.

Wendy Red Star brings illustrations from the Denver Art Museum’s card catalog to the Crow Nation’s annual gathering.

Finding moments of beauty and elegance in industrial labor.

Updating the iconic posters of the Works Progress Administration.

Tennessee’s once-segregated parks turn over a new leaf.

Public art has the power to show us what we want to see—or reveal what we deserve.

The faces and places of a forgotten swath of American life.

Snapshots of a life after slavery, and an imagining of a world without bondage.

During the New Deal, Southwest DC was razed to create a “model city” for federal workers. Now the area is being redeveloped again, this time into a gentrified urban playground.

During the Depression, the government encouraged men to get back to work—and women to stay home.

Handmade dolls embodied marginalized workers’ desire for autonomy—and, now, the plight of children at the United States’ southern border.

The history of Texas’s power struggle with water.

A photograph of a home speaks volumes about the inhabitant, even when they’re not included in the shot.

A local beauty pageant can be about more than just looks. It can also reveal how a community wants to be seen.

Documenting a life of a neighborhood means covering street life in all of its joy and pain.

Conspicuous consumption plummeted during the Great Depression, but the fantasy of big spending remains a part of the American dream.

Telling, and preserving, the stories that reveal what it’s really like to be black in America—from Ralph Ellison’s classic novel to now.

Dust Bowl migrants had to pull up roots. Native Hawaiians are strengthening theirs.

Fulfilling the American dream of standing under bright lights while your friends and neighbors applaud.

Shane Lavalette follows the refugees who have made their home in the whitest state in the nation.

As Depression-era art centered on the heroic male figures rebuilding America, Paul Cadmus infused his public work with overt expressions of gay desire.

Leanne Shapton reconsiders motherhood after seeing a photograph of children asleep during a square dance.

A summer of activism in Chicago reminds us that in order for history to be taught, it must first be recorded.

Gordon Parks and the pursuit of happiness as a black American.

For young women who grow up on the family farm, there comes a time to make a choice—should I stay or should I go?

Before many Americans had ever seen an abstract painting, the WPA commissioned artists to create large, avant-garde murals—for installation in a public housing project.

Mark Steinmetz drives the streets of the city’s fast-growing urban sprawl.

Beloved, abandoned, then beloved once more, a Brooklyn pool transforms alongside its neighborhood.

Manual labor can be hard and exhausting, practical and poetic.

The black Southerners who joined the Great Migration wanted to leave oppression behind—not their beloved family recipes. Their traditions would redefine American cooking.

During the Depression, women were advised to “sing for their supper” as a way to survive hard times.

Public murals are contested spaces, where retellings of history and new visions of the future fight for prominence.

The Works Progress Administration funded the creation of public works like dams, bridges—and more than 30 prisons and jails.

The relentless churn of daily news can feel like a burden—especially for those who don’t see themselves represented in it.

A 20th-century mural for a women’s prison meets 21st-century inequality.