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| The Met’s American Wing, More Sparkling Than Ever!
When The Charles Engelhard Court—the grand, light-filled pavilion that has long served as the formal entrance to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing—reopens on May 19 after two years of construction and renovation, the Museum’s unparalleled collections of American sculpture, stained glass, architectural elements, silver, pewter, ceramics, glass, and jewelry will finally be seen in all their glory. So, too, will its early American rooms—12 historic interiors, mostly from the colonial period, located on three floors of the wing’s historic core—that have been renovated and reinterpreted. The period rooms will benefit from new climate control, lighting, and sprinkler systems, as well as improved access via a glass elevator that is clearly visible from the courtyard. This new public elevator should help visitors find their way to the often-overlooked third floor, home to the Museum’s superb collection of early colonial period rooms and decorative arts. From here, visitors have the unique opportunity to take a chronological tour of American historic interiors from the 17th through the 20th centuries, beginning with the Hart Room from Ipswich, Massachusetts (ca. 1680), and concluding with the Frank Lloyd Wright Room (1912–14) from Wayzata, Minnesota.
A major highlight is the addition of a newly acquired period room of New York Dutch design (Figure 1). A rare survival, it is the main living chamber from a house built near Albany in 1751 for Daniel Pieter Winne (1720–1800). Constructed with a series of post-and-beam supports that are reinforced with curved corbels, the New York Dutch Room is an excellent example of Netherlandish building practices from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and therefore it is presented on the third floor along with the Museum’s earliest American interiors and decorative arts. Displayed as a gallery, the room provides an ideal setting for the Museum’s outstanding collection of furniture, silver, and other decorative arts from colonial New York. The American Wing’s preeminent collections of ceramics, silver, glass, pewter, and jewelry are displayed on the second floor balconies of the Engelhard Court. Magnificent ecclesiastical and domestic stained glass windows are also installed in the courtyard and on the balconies, so as to facilitate close examination. One of the most striking changes to the balconies is that the masonry walls have been replaced with glass panels, resulting in much greater transparency and legibility. Now visitors have open views of the balcony cases from points throughout the courtyard. The brilliance of the silver, ceramics, and glass is further enhanced by the backdrop of Central Park, visible through the wall of windows to the West.
Beginning with seventeenth-century objects and ending with works from the early decades of the twentieth-century, the balcony cases follow a chronological sequence arranged by medium or in thematic displays to underscore stylistic affinities. In its previous incarnation, the balcony separated glass and ceramics from the silver displays. By interspersing the media, new juxtapositions and dialogues occur. In a case devoted to the Rococo style, an exquisite pierced silver basket made by Myer Myers for Susannah and Samuel Cornell around 1770 (Figure 2) is displayed alongside a porcelain pickle stand (Figure 3) and two pierced baskets made between 1770 and 1772 by the first successful porcelain factory in America, the American China Manufactory of Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris. These objects are all distinguished by their rarity and exceptional quality, and together they speak eloquently about the Rococo style in America. The new balcony installations also include two cases of American jewelry, which was not previously on permanent display. Ranging from modest Colonial memorial rings to gem-set confections, these cases offer a rich survey of American Jewelry. One highlight is a suite of jewelry designed by Florence Koehler in about 1905 for Emily Crane Chadbourne, daughter of Chicago industrialist, Richard Crane (Figure 4). These objects showcase Koehler’s interest in exploiting gems for their color, harmony, and surface and her consummate skill in combining them with artfully wrought gold and muted enamels.
Superlative exhibition objects created for display at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, such as the Century Vase and Pedestal by Union Porcelain Works and Tiffany & Company’s Magnolia Vase round out a tour of the Engelhard Court balcony. From early redware and Colonial silver to the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, the balcony offers a fresh look at the Metropolitan Museum’s outstanding collections of American silver, pewter, glass and ceramics. The most significant architectural change to the newly renovated courtyard is the addition of a 3,000 square foot mezzanine, accessible from the balcony by a glass staircase. The mezzanine displays the recent promised gift from Robert A. Ellison Jr., of over two hundred and fifty examples of late 19th and 20th century ceramics. The gift tells the story of a remarkably diverse and innovative period in American ceramics, beginning with the nation’s Centennial through the middle of the twentieth century, with the dawning of the studio potter. The Ellison gift showcases work from all regions of the country, making this a truly representative collection of American ceramics.
The earliest works in the collection date to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a catalyst for the emergence of the art pottery movement in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Commercial potteries hired sculptors to design special artistic wares for their displays; one of the most impressive was that of the Union Porcelain Works under the direction of the German-born sculptor, Karl L. H. Müller. His most ambitious pieces included designs based on classical forms and decorative motifs. One such example is a jardinière with three scenes in bas-relief depicting the history of ceramic making, including a vignette of a modern studio (Figure 5).
The collection includes twenty exemplary pieces by George E. Ohr, the “mad potter” of Biloxi, Mississippi, renowned for his idiosyncratic forms and experimental glazes and surfaces. Decades ahead of his time, Ohr manipulated forms and experimented with surface treatments ranging from the pocked corroded surfaces of his highly finished works to the unglazed pinched vessels mimicking natural landscapes (Figure 6).
The Ellison gift continues the story of American ceramics by bringing the Metropolitan’s collection solidly into the middle of the 20th century. Responding to the evolving styles, art potters embraced elements of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and ultimately found new modes of expression in ceramics during the 1930s and 1940s. Art and industrial design programs offering the study of ceramics gained traction at this time, led in part by the pioneering artist, Maija Grotell, who trained with Charles F. Binns and eventually headed the ceramics department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Figure 7). One of the latest pieces in the collection is a ca. 1955 work by Peter Voulkos. A traditional wheel thrown piece with painted imagery, this work represents the moment just before Voulkos aggressively altered his pieces, essentially deconstructing his vessels into a new kind of form. Prime examples leading up to this date punctuate the final period represented on the mezzanine. In conclusion, we hope to see you when the American Wing courtyard and period rooms reopen to the public on May 19!
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