Metropolitan Museum

There has always been an important affinity between great museums and distinguished connoisseurs of art. It is a relationship of mutual enrichment but one of special importance to the museums, since traditionally they gain their finest treasures from enlightened and generous collectors. …

The riches of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are truly encyclopedic. Here we can see a statue from the very beginnings of civilization and moments later stand before a painting completed only last year. The extraordinary chronological range of the collections is matched by their geographical scope. …

The United States was born of European parents, and its culture reflects this rich heritage. But Americans have always been aware of the unique vision that led them to explore a new continent and establish a nation there. Historically, the "American experience" was seen largely as a political one—embodied by the institutions and outlook that distinguished the United States from her European forebears. More recently, however, Americans have become aware of the uniqueness of their artistic heritage, which, though it originated abroad, developed and flourished in ways far different from the arts of Europe…

China is a vast and populous country, moving rapidly on all fronts to prepare itself for life in the twenty-first century. Heir to a resplendent ancient culture, modern China is following a unique developmental path that evolves from this long and rich cultural tradition. Our understanding of the transformations in China today must be predicated upon an appreciation of this precious cultural legacy.

This comprehensive two-volume catalogue covers the outstanding collection of English and French medieval stained glass in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Written by curator Jane Hayward, the catalogue is posthumously published as Part I in the Corpus Vitrearum USA series and represents the culmination of Hayward's pioneering work in the field, from the years immediately following World War II, when Hayward first journeyed to France to study medieval stained glass with Louis Grodecki and Jean Lafond, to the month before her death in 1994. …

To late nineteenth-century Americans Augustus Saint-Gaudens was well known as a sculptor of public monuments rendered in a naturalistic, vital, and thoroughly modern aesthetic. …

In 1893 a poster advertising the April issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine appeared in newsstands and bookshops throughout the United States. The subject matter was unlike that of French posters of the period; this poster was modest and the style restrained…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses a remarkable collection of about 175 pastels by important American artists such as Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, Arthur G. Dove, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Because of their extreme fragility, these works are rarely exhibited and are never loaned to other institutions. The collection ranges from charming eighteenth-century pastel portraits to abstract works by twentieth-century modernists…