The American Guitar: A Twentieth-Century Icon

Few objects have left a deeper mark on American culture than the guitar. It has shaped American music from blues and country and western to jazz, folk, rock and roll, pop, and more. Guitars are works of exquisite design and engineering as well as powerful vehicles of self-expression, and they are finally being celebrated in a way that reflects the full scope of the guitar’s global artistic and cultural impact. The American Guitar: A Twentieth-Century Icon is a special installation inaugurating The Met’s newly renovated 3,500-square-foot permanent gallery focused on the instrument. It presents the golden age of the guitar’s innovations and designs from around 1900 through 1970, when many of the instrument’s classic forms took shape, while celebrating the diversity of American music genres that were created during this period.

Showcasing pristine examples of iconic guitars by leading American makers, many with significant stories about their owners, experiments, and historic performances—The American Guitar traces a transformative period in American music and design, from the rise of steel-string acoustic and Hawaiian-style guitars to the development of the archtop and invention and rapid evolution of the electric guitar and bass. Instruments used by musicians such as Mississippi John Hurt, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, Roy Rogers, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Tal Farlow, and others will be featured in the galleries, along with a 1949 prototype by Leo Fender, his pioneering early experiment in the solid-body electric guitar that would lead to the Telecaster; the 1937 Audiovox Model 736 Bass Fiddle, arguably the first solid-body electric bass guitar model; Les Paul’s “Klunker No. 3,” an extensively modified Epiphone guitar that he used to test ideas about amplification and that became an important performance instrument for Mary Ford, his wife and performance partner; and other instruments.

The installation draws principally from the landmark gift of more than 500 of the finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making, which was announced by The Met in 2025. Bringing histories of design, craftsmanship, ownership, and performance together for the first time, The American Guitar presents these instruments as both astonishing works of art and exquisite tools for making music and transforming culture.