Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Sleeping Muse
Constantin Brancusi French, born Romania
Not on view
Most New York African-art collectors of the 1910s and 1920s also acquired sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, the pure lines and abstraction of which mirrored those of African art. This aesthetic is epitomized by Sleeping Muse, on view in the exhibition, which initiated the artist’s twenty-year-long engagement with the sleeping-head motif. The work was included in Brancusi’s first solo exhibition in America, at Stieglitz’s gallery, in March 1914. Shown only a few months before "Statuary in Wood by African Savages," it might have prepared New Yorkers for the stylized shapes of African art. This 1910 bronze was acquired by Stieglitz following the exhibition and remained in his collection until his death.
