Much of America’s aesthetic, economic, and social history is found in works on paper, a category that includes drawings, prints, and watercolors. The ACMAA began to actively collect works on paper in 1967. The collection today numbers several thousand items by noted artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present. Drawings and paintings range from preliminary studies to fully realized compositions. Most nineteenth-century prints originated as reproductions intended for dissemination to the public and depict subjects relevant to the American experience. Twentieth-century and later prints are fine art prints made by a variety of processes as a means of artistic self-expression.