Picture This: California Perspectives on American History

Picture This: California’s Perspectives on American History is an educational resource that features primary source images from the Oakland Museum of California’s collections that reflect the rich cultural diversity of California.

On this website you can:

Browse pictures by three categories: Timeline, Theme, and Most Useful for Educators
Use a Picture Map to locate where images were created
Explore ways to play with the images through our Interactive Activities such as creating your own exhibits, matching images with artifacts, and sorting images by time period

Create Your Own Exhibit

The exhibit below is one of the many created by visitors to Picture This.

(VERSION FINALE)The Great Okie Migration by Chotard Mathieu and ALLEK Yannis

Our exhibition is made of eight pictures with captions in the style of Dorothea Lange. Most of these images were taken by this woman and are parts of her work as a photographer and reporter for the American government in the 1930's.The main topic of this exhibition is the Great Okie migration during the Dustbowl, between the 1930's and the 19404's. The natural disasters which hit the Great Plains repetitively during this period led to a mass migrations. Oklahoma is the the state located in the Great Plains with the highest number of people who left.

The Great Okie Migration by Chotard Mathieu and Allek Yannis

See more exhibits created by visitors to Picture This »