September 19, 2000-January 7, 2001
The Tisch Galleries
In America in the second quarter of the 19th century — between 1825, when the Erie Canal was built, and 1861, when the Civil War began — the visual arts proliferated. On September 19, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a landmark exhibition, Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, which will explore in unprecedented depth the history of American art of this period, as epitomized in New York City.
More than 300 works — including outstanding examples of painting and sculpture, city planning and architecture, photography, prints, all of the decorative arts, and fashion — will be shown, assembled from some 100 lenders in the United States and Europe. Among them will be approximately 100 works in all media from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.
The exhibition is made possible by FleetBoston Financial.
"Several hundred superb works of art — both made in New York and imported from abroad for an increasingly sophisticated American audience between the years of 1825 and 1861 — have been brought together from diverse public and private collections in this country and in Europe for this special exhibition," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. "Through art, the visitor will experience the very moment when New York City began to see itself as a world center of culture. Indeed, the city we know today — the vibrant capital of art, architecture, design, and fashion — finds its roots in this period. This presentation will shed new light on the history of art in America before the Civil War."
By the second quarter of the 19th century, New York City — already the nation's financial center — was poised to move into the position of a "world city," on par with London and Paris. In 1825, the opening of the Erie Canal linked the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, and the port of New York became the gateway to the United States. For the next 35 years, until 1861, when cultural life and artistic activity were disrupted by the start of the Civil War, New York blossomed into the largest city in the Western Hemisphere and the center of manufacturing, culture, and the arts. The history of all the visual arts in this fertile period — never before seen in a comprehensive museum exhibition — will be the focus of Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861.
The exhibition will be arranged chronologically and thematically, with each gallery devoted to the consideration of a single topic: The Rise of a Great City (1825-35); Portrait Gallery; Greek Revival Architecture; Decorative Arts (1825-40); Knickerbocker Artists and Authors; Connoisseurship in New York; Crystal Palace (1853); Photography, the New Medium; The Great Emporium; The Empire City; and The Triumph of American Artists. The presentation will culminate with Frederic Edwin Church's monumental painting, Heart of the Andes,, shown as it originally was — as the sole work of art in a dramatically darkened room.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, which will be available in the Museum's Bookshops. The publication features previously unpublished material on the complex story of American art in the second quarter of the 19th century in historical essays that will address each of the visual art disciplines and in individual catalogue entries on each work in the exhibition.
A variety of programs and educational resources will be scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition. These will include a scholarly symposium, lectures and gallery talks for general visitors, and programs and materials for teachers, students, and families.
The exhibition is organized by John K. Howat, Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman, Departments of American Art, and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.
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November 10, 1999
Press resources