On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Beacon Lights
Louisa Keyser Washoe
Not on view
This fine basket, with a balanced form, meticulous motif spacing, and more than eighty thousand stitches, reveals Keyser’s exceptional dexterity and command of the medium. Keyser’s longtime patrons, Abe and Amy Cohn of Carson City, Nevada, fabricated a story that she had inherited the right to weave this basket’s shape and that the motif represents Washoe signal fires—hence the title, Beacon Lights. In fact, the gifted artist invented both the basket’s form and its motif. It created quite a stir in 1914 when collector G. A. Steiner paid $1,400 for it, a large sum at the time.
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