September 19, 2000-January 7, 2001
The Tisch Galleries
This press kit for Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these four releases, to which you can link directly by clicking on their titles:
Statement from Fleet
Curatorial Biographies
Student Pass Program
Exhibition Catalogue
By the second quarter of the 19th century, New York City — already the nation's financial center — was poised to become a "world city" on a par with London and Paris. With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which linked the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, the great port of New York became the gateway to the West, assuring the city's commercial preeminence. Over the next 35 years, until the start of the Civil War in 1861, New York grew rapidly, becoming the "Empire City" — the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, and the nation's center of manufacturing, culture, and the arts.
Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 19, 2000, the landmark exhibition Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 will explore the visual arts in America during this time, and will chronicle New York's ascendancy to the position of the nation's primary art center and its capital of culture, a role it has claimed ever since. The presentation will feature some 310 works from 84 lenders in the United States and Europe.
The exhibition is made possible by Fleet.
"Through the hundreds of works that will be brought together for this unprecedented exhibition, New Yorkers — as well as our visitors from around the world — will experience the moment when New York City began to perceive itself as the center of culture in America. Indeed, the city we know today — the vibrant capital of art, architecture, design, and fashion — finds its roots in this period," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum.
Terrence Murray, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fleet, noted: "Fleet is proud to sponsor this exhibition, our first at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This promises to be a beautiful exhibition, and one that pays homage to the wonderful City of New York in a very special way. We know that our customers depend on us for innovative financial services, and that our communities depend on us for creative investment. With this exhibition and the student pass program we are supporting to encourage visits by students and their families, we hope to convey our commitment to the New York communities where Fleet plays a vital economic and philanthropic role."
Art and the Empire City will be organized thematically within a chronological framework, beginning with works that characterize New York's status in 1825 as a small city, poised to move into a position of greater prominence. Moving through the galleries, visitors will see how economic, historical, technological, demographic, and cultural forces coalesced, transforming New York into a major world city. The 12 galleries of the exhibition will be organized as follows:
The Rise of a Great City (1825-35)
The first gallery begins in the year 1825, when New York City celebrated the completion of the Erie Canal and its artists conceived of the National Academy of Design, one of the nation's first fine arts institutions. Visitors entering the exhibition will encounter the imposing, 1826 full-length portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette by Samuel F. B. Morse, on loan from New York's City Hall. Lafayette was much beloved in America for his role in the Revolutionary War. When he returned to the United States in 1824 for a lengthy national tour and to witness the opening of the Erie Canal, all of the major artists in New York vied for the opportunity to paint his portrait — the most
important commission of the decade. It is significant that Morse, future master of photography and inventor of the telegraph and a founder and the first president of the National Academy of Design, as well as a champion of the movement to foster the arts in America, was awarded the commission.
Flanking Lafayette's portrait will be a pair of monumental silver presentation vases from the Metropolitan's own collection, crafted in 1824-25 by Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner. A gift of thanks to Governor De Witt Clinton from the merchants of Pearl Street for his role in envisioning and overseeing the building of the Erie Canal, these elaborate covered vases are embellished with scenes of the canal's construction. In 1825, New York was still dependent on Philadelphia for silversmiths capable of such a high level of craftsmanship, but that would soon change, as a presentation coffee urn (The Detroit Institute of Arts) in the same gallery, made by Gale and Moseley of New York in 1829, makes evident.
The nascent American school of landscape painting will be represented by View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains, a breathtaking vista over the Hudson River painted by Thomas Cole around 1827, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Hand-colored engravings, aquatints, and lithographs depict New York as it was then — concentrated in lower Manhattan below 14th Street. (The renowned diarist and former mayor of New York Philip Hone was one of the first to use the term "downtown," which was coined in this period.)
Other highlights in the gallery include works from the Metropolitan's collection, such as William J. Bennett's engraving, Fulton Street and Market (1828-30), a streetscape still recognizable today, and the large-scale, tripartite New York Harbor from the Battery (1829) by Thomas Thompson, a landmark in the history of American lithography. Thomas Hornor's early depiction of Broadway at Canal Street (1836), an aquatint and etching with hand-coloring, shows the city's main street bustling with merchants, carriages, carts, and shoppers.
Portrait Gallery
During the 1820s and 1830s, before Thomas Cole's investigations of the American landscape became influential, portraiture dominated American painting and sculpture. The exhibition's second gallery will recreate a 19th-century portrait gallery, recalling the famous Governors' Room (then the actual New York City office of the state's governors) in City Hall as it looked around 1825. The gallery will present painted portraits and marble busts of some of New York's most distinguished artists, writers, and cultural leaders by New York's most accomplished artists. The Yale University Art Gallery has lent a commanding marble bust of the painter John Trumbull by Robert Ball Hughes (modeled 1833; carved 1834-after 1840), while Trumbull's own work will be represented in the gallery by his 1792 full-length portrait of Alexander Hamilton (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Collection of Americana), a figure revered by New Yorkers. Other prominent figures, such as De Witt Clinton, Andrew Jackson, who was president of the United States from 1829 to 1837, the poet and newspaper editor William Cullen Bryant, the painters Cole and Asher B. Durand, and the author Washington Irving are among the New York luminaries rendered by painters such as Durand and Morse and sculptors such as Hiram Powers and John Frazee.
Neo-Classical Architecture
Many of New York's great public buildings of the era (most no longer extant), as well as both typical and visionary housing projects, were executed in the Grecian style. Architectural drawings of great clarity and beauty illustrate the style that dominated the period between 1825 and 1840, and will be on view in the third gallery in. In addition to original presentation drawings, the gallery will include selections from the masterpiece of early lithography, Views of the Public Buildings in the City of New York Correctly Drawn on Stone by A. J. Davis (1827), printed by Anthony Imbert. Two of the works depicted here, the Rotunda — a building in City Hall Park constructed in 1818-20 to house John Vanderlyn's grand panorama of the gardens and the palace at Versailles — and the façade of the Branch Bank of the United States are of particular interest because both the panorama and the façade can be seen on permanent display in the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing.
Decorative Arts, 1830-45
The fourth gallery will feature interior furnishings that might have been found in Grecian-style houses and decorative arts in various media dating from around 1830 to around 1845. The Brooklyn Museum of Art will lend a pair of pilasters and a mahogany door with a pedimented frame from Clarkson Lawn, a grand Grecian house built in Brooklyn in the mid-1830s. Joseph Meeks and Sons, one of the most prolific New York cabinetmaking firms of the period, will be represented by a bold mahogany-veneered pier table (ca. 1835; private collection) with curvilinear supports, and also by a hand-colored broadside, a rare lithograph of enormous importance to the history of American furniture, which shows the firm's product line in 1833. Among the objects in silver, Baldwin Gardiner's covered tureen on a stand (ca. 1830; private collection) and a delicate basket by Marquand and Company (1833-38; The Baltimore Museum of Art), both made in New York, bear eloquent testimony to the high level of craftsmanship and design by then available in New York. An exquisite pair of argand lamps (ca. 1835; Dallas Museum of Art), probably manufactured in England, bear the mark of the New York retailer J. and I. Cox, a purveyor to the American market of lighting fixtures and other domestic and imported goods.
A rosewood armchair, couch, and six nested tables (all from private collections) were part of a large order of furniture by Duncan Phyfe that was filled in New York in 1840-41 for use at Millford plantation in South Carolina. These works exemplify the appreciation in other parts of the country for New York style. Refined earthenwares, such as a large pitcher embellished with thistles (ca. 1835-50; The Metropolitan Museum of Art) that was produced in Jersey City by the American Pottery Company, are remarkable
for their crisply molded patterns.
New York Artists and Authors
The interrelationship between the visual arts and literature will be explored in the fifth gallery, which includes such masterworks as Thomas Cole's 1827 oil painting Last of the Mohicans (Wadsworth Atheneum), inspired by the eponymous James Fenimore Cooper novel, and Asher B. Durand's 1849 iconic painting Kindred Spirits (The New York Public Library), a tribute to both artist Thomas Cole (who had died in 1848) and poet William Cullen Bryant. Marble busts of Cole and Bryant, both by Henry Kirke Brown, will flank the painting. Robert Weir's circa 1837 depiction of St. Nicholas (The New-York Historical Society) attests to the development of Christmas as a national celebration during this period.
Connoisseurship and Collecting in New York
A measure of New York's increasing cultural sophistication was reflected in the high quality of foreign works of art on view in public exhibitions or acquired by New Yorkers for their personal collections. The sixth gallery will present unprecedented documentation of the evolution of American taste in foreign works of art, beginning in the 1830s with an interest in such Old Master paintings as A Grand Landscape (An Extensive Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Village Church) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1665-70; The National Gallery, London), which was first displayed in New York in 1830. Over time, New Yorkers developed an appreciation for works by contemporary European artists, such as Rosa Bonheur's 1851-53 The Horse Fair, which is in the Metropolitan's permanent collection. Works ranging from Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's painting Four Figures on a Step (ca. 1655; The Kimbell Art Museum), to Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen's Ganymede and the Eagle (1817-29; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts), to J. W. M. Turner's renowned Staffa, Fingal's Cave (1832; Yale Center for British Art) will illustrate the quality and diversity of art works seen in New York before the Civil War. Works owned by private collectors of the time — such as the 1449 Triumph of Fame (birth tray of Lorenzo de' Medici) by Giovanni di Ser Giovanni, called Scheggia (originally in the renowned collection of Thomas J. Bryan, and now in the Metropolitan), as well as engravings after Old Masters (such as Rembrandt and Rubens) and contemporary works (by Paul Delaroche and David Wilkie) — are among the other works on display in this gallery.
Crystal Palace, 1853
New York's presence on the international stage of world culture was heralded by the 1853 "New-York Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations," the focus of the next gallery. The exhibition, also known as The New York Crystal Palace, was housed in a grand building of cast-iron and glass. Both the structure and the exhibition itself were modeled on and intended to rival London's Great Exhibition of 1851 (the first world's fair). The 1853 exposition will be explored through American works that were displayed there, including the iconic Greek Slave (1847) by Hiram Powers, now in the collection of The Newark Museum; a rare suite of rosewood seating furniture in the Louis XIV style by Julius Dessoir, a gift in honor of the Museum's 125th anniversary in 1995, seen here for the first time; and a recently rediscovered Gothic-style carved oak bookcase (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) made by Gustave Herter, who was to become America's premier cabinetmaker and decorator by the end of the Civil War.
Photography, the New Medium
In counterpoint to the portrait gallery at the beginning of the exhibition, the eighth gallery presents early New York daguerreotypes and salted paper prints. Photography, which was introduced to America by Samuel F. B. Morse soon after its invention in France in 1839, made portraiture available to an ever-widening audience, which ranged from illustrious Americans such as Walt Whitman and P. T. Barnum (their daguerreotype
portraits will be on view), to common folk such as a fireman with his hat and horn and a grocery boy with his parcel. Almost instantaneously, Americans embraced the new medium, with the result that soon there were more practicing daguerreotypists in New
York City than in all of Europe. The exhibition will include works by well-known pioneers in the field, such as Mathew B. Brady, and lesser-known artists — Gabriel Harrison and Jeremiah Gurney among them — whose contributions to this art form only now are being brought to public attention.
The Great Emporium
By the 1850s, New York boasted a dazzling array of high-quality wares, both produced locally and imported from abroad, which attracted people from all over the country. For those who came to shop, Broadway was the heart of "the Great Emporium." Works on view in this gallery will suggest the panoply of luxury goods available in New York at mid-century. In the center of the gallery two mannequins in silk day dresses, shoppers en promenade, will suggest a popular pastime as well as New York's reputation as a center of fashion. Among the highlights of this gallery are: a richly carved statuary mantelpiece depicting Paul and Virginia (characters from a popular French novel), commissioned by Hamilton Fish of New York (1851; Museum of the City of New York); brightly colored wallpapers; and gleaming silver, such as the covered urn (1845; Henry Clay Memorial Foundation) presented to Henry Clay by the gold and silver artisans of New York in thanks for the protective tariff of 1842, and a silver tray, pitcher, and two goblets (1856) presented by Temple Emanu-El to the Reverend Dr. D. Einhorn (Congregation Emanu-El, New York).
Thanks to the artistic virtuosity of New York's large and skilled immigrant population, the decorative arts flourished in the Empire City. For example, the production of cut and engraved glass reached an impressive level of expertise, as demonstrated by a spectacular compote made for President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln at the Long Island Flint Glass Works of Christian Dorflinger of Brooklyn, New York (1861; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). High-style furnishings include works by two of the greatest cabinetmakers working in the city in the 1850s: a resplendent carved rosewood sofa by J. H. Belter (ca. 1855; Milwaukee Art Museum), and an elaborately carved rosewood étagère by Alexander Roux (ca. 1855; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Other highlights of this gallery include a small tabletop bookcase made in 1851 (Museum of the City of New York) by Thomas Brooks of Brooklyn as a gift from the firemen of New York to the renowned soprano Jenny Lind ("the Swedish Nightingale") — whose nationwide tour was organized by the impresario P. T. Barnum — and a magnificent figured maple and rosewood reception room cabinet made circa 1860 by Gustave Herter (Victoria Mansion, Morse-Libby House, Portland, Maine). Two ball gowns that were worn to the Prince of Wales Ball held in New York during his visit in 1860, both on loan from the Museum of the City of New York, will also be on view. A display of period jewelry documented as having been made in New York includes the 1861 seed-pearl parure (necklace and a pair of bracelets) acquired from the New York jeweler Tiffany and Co. for Mary Todd Lincoln, who wore them to her husband's inaugural ball (Library of Congress).
The Empire City
By mid-century, New York had assumed the status of "Empire City," as the tenth gallery, displaying the large-scale 1851 map of New York City published by Matthew Dripps (Library of Congress) and city views drawn from numerous private collections and public archives, will attest. Frederick Law Olmsted's presentation boards (Municipal Archives) depict proposals for Central Park, which was under development at this time. Each board juxtaposes Olmsted's "Greensward" plan of 1857 with Mathew Brady's photographs of the existing, somewhat barren topography, and Calvert Vaux's lush oil sketches that convey a vision of what Central Park was to become. Architectural drawings of churches, public buildings, the Croton Water Works, and private houses, now in a variety of styles ranging from Gothic Revival to polychromatic Venetian, are
intermingled with rare urban views captured in the new medium of photography, including early cityscapes owned by The J. Paul Getty Museum, many of them seen publicly for the first time. A stained glass window (1844-47) by William Jay Bolton and
John Bolton (St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn) represents the first major program of stained glass made in America; it complements Miriam and Jubal, the monumental organ window from the same church, which is on permanent view in the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing.
The Triumph of American Artists
By the mid-1840s, American painting and sculpture had come into their own, and New York City was the center of the American art scene. In the eleventh gallery, titled The Triumph of American Artists, each of America's major artists will be represented by a signature work known to have been exhibited in New York City or owned by a New York collector during the period. Among these diverse masterpieces will be Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845; The Metropolitan Museum of Art), painted for the New York market by the Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham, William Sidney Mount's Eel Spearing at Setauket (1845; New York State Historical Association), New York Harbor by Fitz Hugh Lane (1850; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South (1859; The New-York Historical Society, on permanent loan from The New York Public Library). Sculpture ranging from Chauncey Bradley Ives's neoclassical marble of Ruth (modeled 1849 and carved 1851 or later; Chrysler Museum of Art), to the painted plaster Slave Auction by John Rogers (1859; The New-York Historical Society), to the cast bronze Indian Hunter by John Quincy Adams Ward (modeled 1857-60; The Metropolitan Museum of Art) are among the other works in the gallery. Also on view are engravings, etchings, and lithographs that explore the relationship between American painters and the art of printmaking, a medium that helped to make art available to a broader public.
The Heart of the Andes
The exhibition will culminate in the dramatic display of Frederic Edwin Church's monumental painting The Heart of the Andes (1859). This masterpiece from the
Metropolitan's collection, an idealized depiction of an exotic South American vista, will be the sole work of art on view in the final gallery, presented as it was originally — as a single picture in a darkened room. The painting will be displayed in a reconstruction of the original, elaborate, freestanding frame of dark wood that the artist designed for it, intending to create the effect of looking through a casement window onto an actual landscape. During its 1859 single-picture debut in New York, the painting was seen by no fewer than 12,000 viewers. Subsequently it was shown to great acclaim in London, after which it was returned to the United States and then toured the country until 1861. In addition, this remarkable painting was one of the works exhibited at the Sanitary Fair of 1864, an event organized to raise funds for the war wounded, and which inspired the citizens of New York to call for a city museum. Although the Civil War intervened, in 1870 Frederic Church helped to found that museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Catalogue and Educational Events
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, which will be available in both softcover and hardbound editions in the Museum's bookshops. The publication, which will be published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, will feature previously unpublished material on the complex story of American art in the second quarter of the 19th century, discussed in 13 essays. Contributors include, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: John K. Howat, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman, Departments of American Art; from the Department of American Decorative Arts, Morrison H. Heckscher, the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator; Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Curator; Amelia Peck, Associate Curator; and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, Associate Curator; from the Department of American
Paintings and Sculpture, Carrie Rebora Barratt, Associate Curator and Manager, The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art; Kevin J. Avery, Associate Curator; Thayer Tolles, Associate Curator; and Elliot Bostwick Davis, Assistant Curator; and, from the Department of Photographs, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Assistant Curator.
Other contributors include Caroline Rennolds Milbank, fashion historian; Dell Upton, Professor of Architectural History, University of California, Berkeley; and Deborah Dependahl Waters, Curator of Decorative Arts and Manuscripts, Museum of the City of New York.
The exhibition catalogue is made possible through the support of the William Cullen Bryant Fellows.
A variety of programs will be scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition. In a two-day symposium, a roster of art historians, historians, and other scholars will discuss New York City's economic, historical, and cultural life in the period. A series of auditorium lectures by the exhibition's curators will be offered to the public free with Museum admission. Additional programs include subscription lectures and concerts, a free series of documentary films, poetry readings, and programs and materials for teachers, students, and families.
A "student pass" program will provide all New York City schoolchildren and their families with free admission to the Museum. This program, which is unprecedented for the Metropolitan Museum in its scope, is also made possible by Fleet.
An audio tour, part of the Metropolitan's new Key to the Met Audio Guide, will be available for rental ($5, $4.50 for members).
The Key to the Met Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg News.
The Web site for the Metropolitan Museum (www.metmuseum.org) will feature the exhibition.
The exhibition is organized by John K. Howat and by Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, who is Project Director for the exhibition and catalogue. Conservation is by
the Museum's Paper Conservation Department. Exhibition design is by Daniel Bradley Kershaw, Exhibition Designer; graphic design is by Sophia Geronimus, Graphic Designer; and lighting is by Zack Zanolli, Lighting Designer, all of the Museum's Design Department.
Related Exhibition
A related exhibition, Intimate Friends: Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and William Cullen Bryant, will be on view concurrently at The New-York Historical Society (October 17, 2000-February 4, 2001).
A flyer listing programs and resources at the Metropolitan Museum will also note other programs, exhibitions, and activities citywide relating to Art and the Empire City .
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STATEMENT FROM FLEET
Fleet is proud to sponsor the exhibition Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This beautiful exhibition, which celebrates New York's evolution into the country's cultural and commercial heart, is especially close to ours. Featuring works by Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Gustave Herter, and Tiffany and Company, among many others, this exhibition of 310 objects is a visual celebration of the innovative spirit of New York and its unparalleled ability to lead the way for our country and the world.
This sponsorship, our first at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, marks a true coming of age for our company. FleetBoston Financial has evolved into a world-class provider of dynamic financial services, bringing innovative thinking and expertise to more than 20 million customers throughout the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Our customers and communities depend on us for innovation in consumer and commercial banking, investment banking, and institutional and individual investment services and for creative investments in our communities. In that regard, we are pleased to fund the largest school pass program in the Museum's history, issuing free admission passes to 1.5 million schoolchildren and their families throughout New York City. With this program and this exhibition, we hope to convey our unwavering commitment to the arts and our stakeholders and to playing a vital role in the glorious future of the Empire City.
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CURATORIAL BIOGRAPHIES
John K. Howat
Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman
Departments of American Art
John K. Howat, a specialist in 19th-century American painting, first came to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1966 as a Chester Dale Fellow. He was appointed Assistant Curator in the American Paintings and Sculpture Department in 1967, Associate Curator in Charge in 1968, and Curator in 1970. In 1982, he was elected Chairman of the Departments of American Art, a position that oversees two departments — American Decorative Arts and American Paintings and Sculpture. In 1983, he was named the Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman.
Notable among the exhibitions Mr. Howat has organized for the Museum are: 19th-Century America: Paintings and Sculpture (1970), the inaugural installation of the American Paintings and Sculpture Galleries (1971), 19th-Century American Landscape (1973), American Impressionist and Realist Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz (1976), The New American Wing (1980), and American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School (1987).
Mr. Howat, who was educated at Harvard University, is currently writing a
biography on the American painter Frederic Edwin Church.
In addition to his responsibilities at the Metropolitan Museum, he is a member of the editorial board of the American Art Journal, the trustee council for the Archives of American Art, and the fine arts committee of Friends of Art in Embassies.
Catherine Hoover Voorsanger
Associate Curator
American Decorative Arts
Educated at Smith College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, Catherine H. Voorsanger specializes in 19th-century American decorative arts and architecture. Ms. Voorsanger joined the Metropolitan Museum in 1983 as Research Associate in conjunction with the exhibitions In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (1986) and American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School (1987). She served as Coordinator of American Wing Documentation in the Museum's Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art in 1987 and 1988, and was awarded a two-year research grant in The American Wing in 1989 by the David Schwartz Foundation, Inc. Ms. Voorsanger was appointed Assistant Curator in the Department of American Decorative Arts in 1991. As Associate Curator in the Department of American Decorative Arts — a position she has held since 1996 — Ms. Voorsanger is responsible for post-Federal 19th- and early 20th-century furniture in The American Wing.
At the Metropolitan, she participated in gallery installations in The American Wing, most recently that of the Deedee Wigmore Gallery (1999). She organized the exhibition The Decorative Arts of Frank Lloyd Wright in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1994) and served as a co-curator of Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age (1995).
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FREE ADMISSION FOR 1.5 MILLION NEW YORK CITY STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO METROPOLITAN MUSEUM IN INNOVATIVE PASS PROGRAM ANNOUNCED BY
FLEET AND THE MUSEUM
(New York City, April 14, 2000)-The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fleet today announced an innovative "student pass" program that will provide free admission to the Metropolitan for schoolchildren and their families from all five boroughs of New York City this fall. Expected to reach the 1.5 million kindergarten through high-school students in public, private, and parochial schools, this is the broadest school pass program yet undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum. This outreach program will coincide with the Museum's presentation of Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 - a landmark exhibition of the visual arts in America between the opening of the Erie Canal and the start of the Civil War - that will be on view from September 19, 2000, through January 7, 2001. The announcement was made at a news conference today at which the Museum unveiled plans for the exhibition.
The exhibition and the student pass program are made possible by Fleet.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan, commented: "With the generous support of Fleet, the sponsor of Art and the Empire City and an array of related educational programs, we are pleased to provide this unsurpassed opportunity for children and families to explore the Museum and celebrate the art of their city. We hope that this program will offer not only a new and exciting context for them to view the treasures of the Metropolitan, but will also instill in them a new level of familiarity and appreciation for art."
"Fleet is delighted to sponsor this exhibition and landmark educational program," said Terrence Murray, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fleet. "By encouraging museum attendance among 1.5 million students, their families, and their teachers throughout New York City, we are continuing two traditions Fleet is passionate about: youth development and support of the arts. Combined with the family guide, the program will bring a taste of this historically important exhibition into the classroom."
At the start of the fall school term, the passes will be delivered to all New York City schools for classroom distribution. Each pass will consist of two parts - the actual pass, which is valid for one visit to the Museum for the student with his or her family, and a family guide, which highlights objects in the Art and the Empire City exhibition that will be of particular interest to students. This is the first time that the Museum will produce a family guide in combination with a student pass for all New York City students.
In addition to the student pass program, the Museum is developing a range of programs for students, teachers, and the general public in conjunction with Art and the Empire City. Noteworthy among these are a one-day conference for teachers, documentary films, concerts, lectures, writing classes for junior-high and high-school students, a limited number of self-guided tour appointments for school groups, a family festival, and programs for families to be held offsite in neighborhood centers and schools throughout the community. A scholarly symposium has also been scheduled.
"Every New Yorker's greatest treasure is the Metropolitan Museum," said Kent Lydecker, Associate Director for Education at the Metropolitan. "We welcome 200,000 students on school visits through our doors each year, and with this greatly expanded program linked to Art and the Empire City we are going the extra mile to reach out to every student in New York City, so that they - with their families - can be introduced to the cultural riches of their own city."
To distribute the passes, the Metropolitan Museum will work with not only the New York City Board of Education but also the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, and a network of administrators of other schools, including private and parochial schools, with the goal of reaching every one of the 1.5 million schoolchildren in the city.
For more information about these programs, call the Museum's Education Department at (212) 570-3756.
For information about Fleet, contact:
Rena DeSisto
212-703-1961
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EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Edited by Catherine Hoover Voorsanger and John K. Howat
This catalogue accompanies a major exhibition Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in September 2000. The period covered begins with the inauguration of the Erie Canal, when the new waterway turned the port of New York into the gateway to the United States, and ends with the outbreak of the Civil War. Already the financial capital of America, the city now became both an international economic center and an international center of culture.
In wide-ranging essays that will interest scholars as well as a more general audience, specialists from the Metropolitan Museum and other institutions study the proliferation of the visual arts and the growth of an increasingly sophisticated audience for those arts created during the period. Dell Upton, Professor of Architectural History, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, provides cultural and historical context, while John K. Howat, Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman, Departments of American Art at the Museum, contributes an essay on New York collectors; other authors examine the subjects of shopping in the city; the professionalization and growth of exhibition venues; landscape painting seen against the background of tourism; sculpture; prints; architecture and city planning; ceramics and glass; jewelry; costume; furniture; and the birth of photography. The book is lavishly illustrated in color and black and white, providing reproductions of the more than three hundred works in the exhibition and rich comparative material. Bibliography and index.
648 pages. 642 illustrations, including approximately 412 in full color, 9 x 12 in.
Distributed by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87099-957-5; clothbound $75.00.
ISBN 0-87099-958-3; paperbound $49.50.
Distributed by Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08518-4; clothbound $75.00.
For further information on the catalogue, please call:
Marilyn Abel, 212-879-6850
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June 8, 2000
Press resources