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1937: A Year in the Collections

The year that Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to fly around the world was a tumultuous one. The Hindenburg airship went down in flames in New Jersey. Pablo Picasso completed his tragic masterpiece Guernica in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, with Ernest Hemingway reporting from Spain. 1937 also saw the publication of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Zora Neale Hurston's classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Federal Art Project WPA programs supported murals, photography, and theater during a time of high unemployment, documenting rural and urban life in America.


  • National Portrait Gallery 13 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Smithsonian American Art Museum 7 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Archives of American Art 6 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • National Museum of American History 3 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • National Museum of African American History and Culture 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Smithsonian Field Book Project 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Archival materials 6 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Exterior views 3 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Portraits 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Field notes 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Still lifes 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • African Americans 5 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • 1930s 30 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • 1940s 3 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • United States 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • New York 7 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • New York City 3 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • California 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Harlem (New York, N.Y.) 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Lakehurst 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • New Jersey 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • North America 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • North and Central America 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • 5th Avenue 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Currently not on view 13 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • National Portrait Gallery Collection 13 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Graphic Arts 7 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection 7 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Work and Industry: Photographic History 3 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Photographs and Still Images 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Photography 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Bartlett Arctic Expeditions (1928-1947) 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Bartlett, Bob, 1875-1946 1 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Portraits 16 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Entertainers 12 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Arts and Culture 11 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Men 11 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Costume 10 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Architecture 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Design 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Dress accessories 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Interior decoration 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Women 8 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Usage conditions apply 23 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • Not determined 14 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus
  • CC0 2 Filter by term plus Exclude term minus

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Included:

  • Remove Resource Type: Photographs close

Amelia Earhart

Benny Goodman

Rockefeller Center, from 444 Madison Avenue

Inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Hindenburg airship aloft and in flames

Photograph of Bill Bailey

Marlene Dietrich

Band at the Savoy Ballroom

Anna May Wong

Frida Kahlo

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow

John Wayne

Untitled (Storefront Window)

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Gypsy Rose Lee

Lionel Hampton

Untitled

Carmelita Maracci

Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning

"Chain Gang" of New York Stock Exchange officers carrying traded securities to the bank

Image of Hindenburg Airship Crash Site

Backstage, WPA Theater Project, Haiti: The Story of Pierre-Dominique Toussaint l'Ouverture, Lafayette Theater, Harlem, from the Photo League Feature Group project Harlem Document

Radio Corporation of America transmitter building designed by John Vassos

Greenland Expedition of 1937 : photographs, some identified

Artists at a dinner for Ernest Lawson

James Agee

John Vachon, Berwyn, Maryland, September 1937. Post office

Backstage, WPA Theater Project, Haiti: The Story of Pierre-Dominique Toussaint l'Ouverture, Lafayette Theatre, Harlem

Waylande Gregory

Interior designed by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings

Central Park Plaza, from Fifth Avenue at 58th Street

Photographer Zack Brown shooting dapper men in Harlem, c. 1937

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