Collections: History

  • 1st Floor
    Arts of Africa, Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden
  • 2nd Floor
    Arts of Asia and the Islamic World
  • 3rd Floor
    Egyptian Art, European Paintings
  • 4th Floor
    Contemporary Art, Decorative Arts, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
  • 5th Floor
    Luce Center for American Art

On View: Group Statuette

In the Thirteenth Dynasty, statues of "middleclass" Egyptians such as minor bureaucrats, servants, and artists frequently showed their subje...

Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

Hiroshige's 118 woodblock landscape and genre scenes of mid-nineteenth-century Tokyo, is one of the greatest achievements of Japanese art.

    On View: Shepherd Tending His Flock

    The son of farmers, Millet understood both the reassuring cycle of the seasons and the frightening prospect of ruin at nature’s whim. ...

     

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    The decorative arts collection reflects changes in domestic life and design from the seventeenth century to the present. Included are materials ranging from furniture, silver, glass, and ceramics to period rooms and textiles. Although the collections include some European material, their greatest strength is in American objects.

    The earliest pieces of decorative art to enter the collection were silver spoons that came to the Museum in 1902; these were followed the next year by a number of pieces of European porcelain. With the arrival of Luke Vincent Lockwood, a noted collector and scholar, in 1914, the focus of the collections shifted from Europe to America. In 1915, the Museum acquired its first period room; although there are twenty-six period rooms installed in the Museum, due to ongoing construction only five that date from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century are currently on view. During the 1930s, the Museum began actively exhibiting modern design, focusing on design's relationship to industry.

    The collection of decorative arts is exhibited on the Museum's fourth floor in galleries and period rooms, and on the fifth floor in the Luce Center for American Art, including American Identities, a permanent display of American art, and the Visible Storage • Study Center. The department is supported by the American Art Council.

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    Recent Comments

    "This camera is made almost entirely out of bakelite plastic. Metal and glass cannot be used as a primary description. What kind of curation is this?"
    By Nicholas West

    "Mark is Laughlin 588, not 481. Size/dimensions and base molding closely match beakers by RB [Robert Bonynge] of Boston, Mass. Mark also known from a 5-6" saucer and a 9"-range basin. This "IW" is likely an early or mid-18thc Boston pewterer, not John Will of New York."
    By david kilroy

    "Thank you for your inquiry. This plate was hand-painted on a French blank by a Brooklyn artist, John Mackie Falconer who was born in Scotland and came to the United States in 1836. It was manufactured in France, and as you know, it was retailed by John Edwards. "
    By R. Ibrahim

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