~PAINTING GETS ALL the attention in Gallery of the Louvre. And for good reason. Morse’s canvas features copies of thirty-eight paintings. He included four figures who are making paintings or drawings. He envisioned Gallery of the Louvre as proof of his own painterly talents. And he hoped it would educate his countrymen about European art.

In the years preceding the American Revolution, people in Manhattan politically measured their place by marking their relation to the tallest things in the urban landscape. Between 1766 and 1776, five liberty poles—pine ships’ masts that were refashioned into political symbols—were successively erected...