The work entered the New-York Historical Society's collections in 1882 and hung in the stairwell of New-York Historical’s Second Avenue home. It had been on long-term loan to the Deutsches Historisches Museum since 1998, where it is the centerpiece of the 1848 section of the museum’s permanent exhibition. The work finds particular resonance with Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware in the Met’s American Wing. The Leutze's monumental, newly reconstructed frame is based on Mathew Brady photographs in New-York Historical's collection. Leutze’s iconic work, begun in 1849, was seen by contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic as not only connecting the revolutions of 1776 and 1848, but also, like the Köhler, as a rallying cry for the cause of democracy.

The third-floor landing features Tiffany Studios’ five stained glass panels, Christ and the Good Shepherd of 1909 (N84.135, N84.136 and long-term loans from the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass), from the chapel of the Stony Wold Sanatorium in Lake Kushaqua, New York. The Sanatorium was founded to provide treatment for tuberculosis for working women and children from New York City—it provided a “wilderness cure” in the open air.