The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
212-535-7710
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021, photo by Mark Hazeltine)
Resource Library articles and essays honoring the American experience through its art:
Diane Arbus: In the Beginning (7/5/16)
The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky (3/30/15)
The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925 (1/3/14)
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (11/15/10)
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 (11/10/09)
Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (7/10/09)
Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall - An Artist's Country Estate (9/18/06)
Americans in Paris, 1860-1900 (8/9/06)
Robert Rauschenberg: Combines (11/7/05)
Diane Arbus Revelations (4/26/05)
John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker (3/22/05)
Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration (1/2/04)
American Impressions, 1865-1935: Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection (1/2/04)
Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (1/2/04)
Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford (8/8/03)
The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art (7/26/03)
The Prints of Vija Celmins (9/26/02)
Summer Selections: Scenes and Citizens of the Early Republic in Watercolor (8/6/02)
Metropolitan Museum Opens Gallery Devoted to the Works of Louis Comfort Tiffany (8/6/02)
Oldenburg and van Bruggen on the Roof (6/6/02)
William Trost Richards in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2/11/01)
Metropolitan Museum of Art's John K. Howat to Retire in 2001 (12/19/00)
Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 (10/11/00)
Thomas Sully in the Metropolitan (6/12/00)
Parks and Promenades: Maurice Prendergast in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (6/12/00)
Subjects and Symbols in American Sculpture: Selections from the Permanent Collection (3/23/00)
Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935 (2/25/00)
American Folk Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (3/25/99)
New Endowed Curatorships at Met (10/14/98)
Mary Cassatt: Drawings and Prints in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (9/16/98)
Mary Cassatt: Drawings and Prints (1998)
Ivan Albright: Magic Realist (1997)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, New York, New York 10028-0198. For hours and admission fees please see the museum's website.
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021, photo by Mark Hazeltine)
MetPublications
In October 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched MetPublications, an online resource that offers in-depth access to the Museum's print and online publications, covering art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting. Following are 44 titles relating to American representational art available for free viewing via.pdf download or online reading as of 2013:
The American Wing
The American Wing houses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of American art in existence -- more than 15,000 paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts objects -- all of which are accessible to the public on four floors of gallery and study areas. It also features one of the Museum's loveliest and most popular spaces, The Charles Engelhard Court, a glassed-in garden featuring large-scale American sculptures, leaded-glass windows, and other architectural elements.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired important examples of American art since its establishment in 1870. Today the collection is supervised by two curatorial departments: American Paintings and Sculpture, established in 1948, and American Decorative Arts, organized in 1934. (Paintings and sculpture created by artists born after 1876, as well as decorative arts created after 1916, are part of the Museum's Department of Modern Art.)
The American Wing's collection of paintings, comprehensive in scope and extraordinary in quality, illustrates almost all phases of the history of American art from the late 18th to the early 20th century. It includes masterworks by such artists as John Singleton Copley, Ralph Earl, Gilbert Stuart, George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and James McNeill Whistler. Among the most celebrated paintings are Stuart's portrait of George Washington, Bingham's Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, Cole's The Oxbow, Church's Heart of the Andes, Eakins's The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), and Sargent's Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau). The wing also is home to one of the best known works in American art, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's monumental 1851 canvas, Washington Crossing the Delaware.
The sculpture collection is equally distinguished and is especially strong in Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts works. Artists represented include Erastus Dow Palmer, John Quincy Adams Ward, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, Frederic Remington, and Frederick William MacMonnies.
Works in the decorative arts extend in date from the late 17th to the early 20th century. Among the 25 furnished period rooms that span this period and offer an unparalleled view of American domestic architecture are the grand rococo pre-Revolutionary Van Rensselaer hall (1769), a McKim, Mead & White stair hall (1884), and a Frank Lloyd Wright living room (1915). Furniture includes masterpieces from the leading 18th-century cabinetmaking centers of Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, as well as works by Duncan Phyfe, Charles Honoré Lannuier, John Henry Belter, Alexander Roux, and the Herter Brothers created in 19th-century New York City. Highlights in the silver collection include the work of Paul Revere and Tiffany & Company. The extensive glass collection incorporates blown- and pressed-glass vessels, with superb works by the New England Glass Company, the Dorflinger Works, and Tiffany Studios. The collection of American stained glass, from the 17th through the early 20th century, is perhaps the most comprehensive anywhere and features the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The ceramics holdings incorporate a wide variety from Pennsylvania-German redware to Rookwood Pottery. The textiles collection includes over 100 quilts, 18th- and early-19th-century needlework samplers, and fabrics designed by Candace Wheeler.
The American Wing also houses The Henry R. Luce Center
for the Study of American Art, which puts on view the Museum's entire reserve
collection of American objects -- about 850 paintings, 100 sculptures, 600
pieces of furniture, and 7,000 works in other decorative media, including
silver, glass, and ceramics.
TFAO also suggests these DVD or VHS videos:
Why was this sub-index page prepared?
When Resource Library publishes over time more than one article concerning an institution, there is created as an additional resource for readers a sub-index page containing links to each Resource Library article or essay concerning that institution, plus available information on its location and other descriptive information.
See TFAO's Museums Explained to learn about the "inner workings" of art museums and the functions of staff members. In the exhibitions section find out how to get the most out of a museum visit. See definitions for a glossary of museum-related words used in articles.
To help you plan visits to institutions exhibiting American art when traveling see Sources of Articles Indexed by State within the United States.
Unless otherwise noted, all text and image materials relating to the above institutional source were provided by that source. Before reproducing or transmitting text or images please read Resource Library's user agreement.
Traditional Fine Arts Organization's catalogues provide many more useful resources:
American Representational Art links to dozens of topics in American Representational Art
Audio Online a catalogue of online streaming audio recordings
Collections of Historic American Art notable private collections
Distinguished Artists a national registry of historic artists
Geographic Tour of American Representational Art History a catalogue of articles and essays that describe the evolution of American art from the inception of the United States to WWII.
Illustrated Audio Online streaming online narrated slide shows
Articles and Essays Online substantive texts published outside of Resource Library
Videos Online a comprehensive catalogue of online full motion videos streamed free to viewers
Videos an authoritative guide to videos in VHS and DVD format
Books general reference books published on paper
Interactive media media in CD-ROM format
Magazines paper-published magazines and journals
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