Luce Visible Storage/Study Center

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

Many of the objects housed here, however, are part of a recent generous gift from the Matthew Scott Sloan collection that was formed in Brooklyn in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The Brooklyn Museum’s collection has strong holdings of art made during the colonial period in both Mexico and Peru, ranging from paintings and sculpture to silver and furniture. Much of these collections was acquired in the summer of 1941, when the Museum sent the curator Herbert Spinden to South America on a collecting expedition. At this time, the United States was building hemispheric unity in a futile attempt to turn away from the war in Europe, before the country was plunged into the conflict that December. More Spanish colonial material is on exhibition in the adjacent American Identities galleries.

As Manhattan became increasingly congested in the nineteenth century and fire laws were enacted that precluded any manufacturing involving open fires, ceramic makers moved their kilns to the east side of the East River in Brooklyn. Greenpoint, in particular, became a center for ceramic makers such as Union Porcelain Works, the Faience Manufacturing Company, and Charles Cartlidge. The Museum’s extensive collection of ceramics by the Union Porcelain Works, one of the most prestigious American ceramic firms in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, includes wares retained by the firm’s founding family that were donated in the mid-twentieth century.

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

From the Neoclassical marble females of Hiram Powers and Richard Greenough to Gaston Lachaise’s modernist bronze goddess, the full-length human figure has been a central preoccupation of many sculptors represented in the collection. For Spanish colonial carvers, it took the form of the devotional figure in wood, often embellished with painted surfaces and sometimes with more precious materials like ivory and silver. In contrast, twentieth-century modernist carvers, like Chaim Gross, preferred to leave the wooden surface of the figure in a natural state.

Portrait busts in stone, bronze, and even wood are among the most common sculptural forms here, with origins in antiquity. Whether conceived as private commemoration or as public icon, the portrait bust, like the painted portrait, served as the mainstay of many artists’ careers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, executed in a spectrum of styles from realism to modernism. Most are about life-size, adding to their expressive power to commit a mortal human face to the permanence of bronze or stone.

Reliefs, another ancient form of sculpture in which figures project from a background, bring the two-dimensional illusionism of painting to the enduring medium of bronze or marble. Among the many sculptors represented in the collection, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Olin Levi Warner, and Helen Farnsworth Mears excelled at exploiting this pictorial quality, using delicate drawing and subtle modeling in their bronze portrait plaques. Some reliefs here are in the form of round or oval medallions, which recalled the coins and cameos of antiquity.

Brooklyn’s collection is rich in the work of American “animaliers,” later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptors who specialized in bronze animal sculptures, usually executed on a small scale. These works portray highly naturalistic, usually wild, animals, often in vigorous action or combat. Once a model was created, usually in clay, multiple bronze casts could be made for a mass market eager to decorate domestic interiors. Some of these bronzes, like the small version of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s great pumas flanking the Ninth Street gate to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, are reduced-scale models of large outdoor sculptures.

Although Tiffany considered his stained-glass windows a more prestigious art form than his glass lamps and vases, he is best known today for the latter two. On the fourth floor of the Museum are two splendid Tiffany landscape windows that were removed from a deconsecrated church in Brooklyn, as well as a display of the principal Tiffany vases in the collection. With the installation of lamps and vases here in Visible Storage Study Center, all of the Museum’s holdings of Tiffany are now on display.

Many of the works installed here have important provenances, or history of ownership. Some objects were owned by Laura Barnes, wife of Alfred Barnes, the famous Philadelphia collector of Impressionist paintings, and others belonged to René de Quelin, one of Tiffany’s shop stewards, or general managers. A third group donated by Charles Gould, a New York businessman and personal friend of the artist, was selected personally by Tiffany for the Museum.

For thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America have employed numerous materials, forms, techniques, and styles to create works of great beauty and innovation. The thirteen works shown here, dating from 800 B.C. to A.D. 850, represent some of the most exquisite and rare objects in the Arts of the Americas collection.

The Olmec of the Gulf Coast of Mexico (1200–300 B.C.), for example, produced magnificent carvings in jadeite, serpentine, and other minerals—such as the figurines, ornaments, and spoon on display—as offerings to be placed in elite burials or in dedicatory caches celebrating the construction of religious and civic monuments. The Woodland peoples of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys in the United States (A.D. 1–900) sculpted beautifully detailed stone effigy pipes of animals that were probably used during ceremonies. The Maya of Mexico and Central America (250 B.C.–A.D. 900) carved jade and shell to make delicate ornaments and picture plaques that were worn and used by elite members of society; and finally, the Chavin culture of the northern highlands of Peru (900–200 B.C.) created finely incised conch-shell trumpets, which were most likely used during rituals, as depicted on architectural friezes and monumental sculpture.

Notable objects in this case include the Olmec Standing Figure Holding a Baby, remarkable for its delicacy and highly polished surface. The figure has the typical Olmec face with drooping lips, flattened head, drilled ear lobes, and unclothed body. Its sensitively modeled face is serene compared to the animated, snarling expression of the “baby,” which has been interpreted as a supernatural being because it wears a headband decorated with two nodules that is a common attribute of the Olmec infant-jaguar deity. The carving may portray an elite figure holding an ancestral or deity image or the Olmec practice of child sacrifice. The Allison-Copena Panther Effigy Pipe is remarkable for its realism; it is carved on all sides including the bottom pads of the feet. The Maya mosaic head pendant is outstanding in the skillful way the artist arranged tesserae, or small pieces, of jadeite, Spondylus (an orange-colored spiny oyster) shell, mother of pearl, and obsidian to fashion a dramatic face that belies the pendant’s small size. The elaborately incised Chavin Strombus-Shell Trumpet with its self-referential depiction of a human figure blowing a conch shell, has drill holes so it could be suspended on a cord, perhaps from the neck of a priest. In the incised design, a cascade of serpents emanate from the trumpet, possibly alluding to the sacred nature of the sounds produced.

Carved spoons from across North America exhibit equal creativity and range, representing native carvers from the Haida, Tlingit, Alaskan Eskimo, Hupa, Yoruk, and Plains peoples. Made from diverse media, including horn, shell, wood, and pigments, these objects also combine artistry and functionality.

More of the Native American collection can be seen throughout the adjacent American Identities installation and in Living Legacies: The Arts of the Americas on the first floor of the Museum.

Although Tiffany considered his stained-glass windows a more prestigious art form than his glass lamps and vases, he is best known today for the latter two. On the fourth floor of the Museum are two splendid Tiffany landscape windows that were removed from a deconsecrated church in Brooklyn, as well as a display of the principal Tiffany vases in the collection. With the installation of lamps and vases here in Visible Storage Study Center, all of the Museum’s holdings of Tiffany are now on display.

Many of the works installed here have important provenances, or history of ownership. Some objects were owned by Laura Barnes, wife of Alfred Barnes, the famous Philadelphia collector of Impressionist paintings, and others belonged to René de Quelin, one of Tiffany’s shop stewards, or general managers. A third group donated by Charles Gould, a New York businessman and personal friend of the artist, was selected personally by Tiffany for the Museum.

Artists in all of these thriving colonial cultures drew on European models and conventions. Those traditions were sometimes communicated to them through artists immigrating or visiting from Europe; more often, they were introduced by means of imported paintings and, especially, prints. In Spanish and North American colonial portraits alike, artists adapted the postures, costumes, and background accessories of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European painting to denote the social standing of the sitter. Portrait painting dominated the mostly Protestant North American markets well into the nineteenth century. The preponderance of religious subjects by Latin American artists, on the other hand, reflects the influence of the Catholic Church’s efforts to sustain the faith of Spanish colonial populations and to convert indigenous peoples. The Spanish colonial devotional images displayed here are also based on European visual traditions, but many of these religious paintings were greatly enriched and localized by the incorporation of images of indigenous peoples, places, flora, and fauna.

Although North American and Spanish colonial paintings were once relegated to the status of provincial reflections of mainstream European culture, recent study has demonstrated that artistic practice in political and economic colonies was not exclusively a one-way matter of cultural dependency. The Brooklyn Museum’s collections of colonial art offer us many opportunities to see the ways in which local artists and patrons at first employed and then adapted and even transformed such imported elements to serve local requirements and, as time passed, to increasingly reflect their own values.

Although the process of pressing glass was used mainly to manufacture utilitarian tabletop objects such as drinking vessels, it was also employed to produce the types of souvenirs and commemorative objects that are displayed here. These objects might convey a religious message, such as “Bless our daily bread,” or a political one, such as “Remember the Maine,” referring to the destruction of a battleship in Havana harbor that ignited the Spanish-American War in 1898. Other objects bear the likenesses of famous historical figures and anticipate our modern notions of fame and the cult of the personality.

Nearly all of the commemorative pressed glass in the Museum was accessioned at one time in 1940 from a single collection formed earlier in the twentieth century. When this glass was made, probably no one thought it was destined for a museum. Eventually, the passionate zeal and discerning eye of the collector, and then those of the curator, transformed these souvenirs into a collection that reflects a great deal about manufacturing, consumerism, and important moments in the history of the United States. Over the ensuing years, curators have added to the original core group of glass, building on one strength of the collection.

In addition to collecting “historic” objects from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Museum actively collects handmade and machine-made furniture in current production in an effort to keep the collection relevant and up-to-date. In fact, several midcentury objects came to the Museum as new office furniture and were accessioned, or incorporated, into the Decorative Arts collection when their importance was recognized with the passage of time.