The American Bicentennial Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1976

The American Bicentennial Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1976 The American Bicentennial Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1976 Cover: Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851. To generations of Americans, no other painting has conveyed with such symbolic power, the heroic dimensions of the American Revolution. The American Bicentennial Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art To be dedicated in 1976, on the occasion of the nation's Bicentennial, to the genius and spirit of the American people and to the preservation of the priceless heritage of their art. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us 3 £ only as our spirits are banded together £ in a common enterprise. That common enterprise | is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right. S ,1 Woodrow Wilson In 1976 the American people will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the founding of our nation. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the richest and most comprehensive collection of American art in existence, plans to build what we believe will be the most beautiful museum of American art in the world. It is to be named The American Bicentennial Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We hope to dedicate and open it in July 1976 as this institution's contribution to the nation's Bicentennial Celebration. This new Wing will be a permanent facility, exclusively devoted to the creative genius of the American people in the arts, and to what has been, and still is, the best and noblest in our artistic inheritance. The Wing has been recognized as an official National Bicentennial project by the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission in Washington, D.C, and has been endorsed by the New York City Bicentennial Corporation as a Heritage '76 project. The origins of this Wing go back to 1924, at which time the existing American Wing was built thanks to the generosity and leadership of Robert W. de Forest who was then President of the Metropolitan. But the germ of the idea goes back even further, to 1869 when William Cullen Bryant, in advocating the founding of the Metropolitan Museum, insisted on a "gallery to contain the greater works of our painters and sculptors" because the "American soil is prolific of artists." Among the Museum's founding Trustees were some of the nation's leading figures in the arts: the painters Frederick E. Church, Eastman Johnson, and John F. Kensett; architects Richard Morris Hunt and Russell Sturgis; the sculptor John Q. A. Ward; the art dealer and engraver Samuel P. Avery. Daniel Chester French, dean of American sculptors, served as Trustee for over thirty years and directed the acquisition of American sculpture for the collections. Native American art, however, was held in minor esteem by most of the country. Then in 1909, on the occasion of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, the Museum held a major exhibition of American furniture, silver, glass, pottery, textiles, and paintings. That exhibition, unprecedented in a public institution, was an overwhelming popular success and the Museum began in earnest to collect and exhibit the country's native arts. Fifteen years later, in 1924, the Museum opened its American Wing, another unprecedented event for it was the first time an American museum had given a prominent place to the early domestic arts of this country, displaying them in a way that explained their historical development The Museum's example served to awaken broad national interest and pride in our heritage. Other institutions began to establish similar "wings." Concern began to be focused on the need to preserve our architectural heritage from neglect and destruction. Today the collections of American art at the Metropolitan Museum are the most comprehensive in existence. The paintings and sculpture form the largest single body of works of their kind anywhere. The decorative arts collection of furniture, silver, ceramics, glass, and textiles is unsurpassed in quality. Twenty-five period rooms from great historical buildings and re r~ i r homes, beginning with a parlor from an Ipswich, Massachusetts house built before 1675, present an unparalleled view of American history and domestic life spanning two-and-a-half centuries. However, the lack of space, which became increasingly serious as the collections grew, is now so critical that 80% to 90% of these holdings are kept from public view. Within the context of the Metropolitan's Comprehensive Architectural Plan, which will eventually bring the entire Museum to physical completion, the highest priority was given to a major expansion of the existing Wing. In conjunction with experts from the Museum's staff and across the country, the architects Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo have prepared plans for a new structure to surround the present Wing with three stories of public galleries. A total of 55,000 square feet of new space is to be added. A four-story glass-roofed enclosure, preserving the 1823 facade of the United States Branch Bank and its courtyard, will become a Garden Court for American sculpture usable the year-round and providing entrance to the Wing from Central Park. The new structure will provide permanent exhibition galleries for paintings, sculpture, watercolors, prints and drawings from the 17th century to the late 19th. All of the period rooms, including a magnificent recently acquired living room from one of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous prairie houses, will be installed. A system of study-storage will make the entire collections visually and physically accessible. We intend to make the Bicentennial Wing a joy to visit and a pleasure to learn from. A broad educational program will reach every segment of New York City and extend across the nation. Arts councils, historical societies, historical museums, houses and landmarks will benefit from an extensive program to include travelling exhibitions; the loan of objects of particular local significance; publications; and the expertise of the staff on such matters as preservation, restoration, and scholarly research. In short we intend this new Wing to be the vital resource for every cultural institution in the country interested in the American past The objects illustrated on the following pages of this booklet, a tiny fraction of the total holdings, give some indication of the variety of the collections which in their entirety constitute an almost unbroken record of America's development and achievement. These objects, enjoyable, fascinating and marvelous in themselves are also the vital artifacts of our history. They have the capacity to illuminate, long after they were made, the meaning of what we call the American experience and the makeup of our American character. They can make tangible and understandable what for us today may have become vague, historical abstractions, but which for our forebears were living principles and values. It is our conviction that in such an awareness of the American past lies the means for forging, in the words of the Bicentennial Commission, Douglas Dillon "a new national commitment, a new spirit for '76, a spirit which will President unite the nation in purpose and dedication..." This will be the higher purpose of the American Bicentennial Wing of Thomas Hoving The Metropolitan Museum of Art when it is dedicated. Director 186S61 "The American, Christopher Columbus, painted by This New Man" Sebastiano Del Piombo in 1519. The story of America can be said to begin almost half a millennium ago, on a moonlit 2 a.m., October 12, 1492, when a lookout on the caravel Pinta sighted the limestone cliffs of what is today San Salvador in the Bahamas. Christopher Columbus, seeking a new route to ancient Asia, and prepared with a letter of introduction to the Grand Khan of China, had discovered instead, the New World. Columbus died in disrepute and scorn. But, as it turned out, his was what historians have come to call "the most important voyage of discovery in all history," which is why we honor him each October twelfth. The next hundred years saw the New World dotted with trading posts established by the Spanish, Dutch, French, and finally the English. England, however, also began to colonize America's wilderness and thus put her stamp on the continent's future. There was Jamestown in 1607, Plymouth, 1620, Massachusetts in 1628. Hardship, disease and starvation all but wiped out Jamestown. At Plymouth only fifty of the 102 Puritans aboard the Mayflower survived the first winter, yet when the ship set sail in the spring for England none wanted to return. For the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth this new world held the promise of a new beginning, a fresh start, a life free from oppression. This image of America has held true ever since. The American character was formed in the crucible of the Puritan struggle to endure and take root as a community. The stress on faith, hard work and sacrifice was necessary. The Mayflower Compact, requiring "obedience to... just and equal laws" contained the first seeds of democracy and self-government. It was the New England divine, Cotton Mather who in 1684 first applied the word Americans to the colonists. In 1774 Patrick Henry was to stand before the Continental Congress and declare that he was "not a Virginian, but an American." A national identity had been born. With the War of Independence Americans not only claimed the land as home, they gave the world a new model of self-government. In 1782, J. Hector St John Crevecoeur, in his Letters from an American Farmer, summed up our native character this way: "The American, this new man," he said, is one "who acts on new principles, new laws, a new social system." The Puritan, (Deacon Samuel Chapin) by Augustus Saint-Gaudens Silver inkstand by John Coney, Boston, early 18th century.

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