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Louis Comfort Tiffany, Magnolias and Irises
(1908) |
There has been little new to report in the permanent collections over the past year and a half. We are still unable to see the remaining six galleries of the European Painting section, since the Met is engaged in what they term a momentous project of installing new skylights for this entire area. I am also awaiting the reopening of British Decorative Arts in one month, hoping I will be more impressed than I was with the previous installation.
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| Yup'ik artist, Mask, Alaska (1900) |
In the meantime, I made some discoveries in the first floor of the American Wing, which I last saw years ago. First was the late-19th and early-20th century decorative arts rooms, which include a complete Frank Lloyd Wright living room, Arts and Crafts artifacts, beautiful Tiffany windows and other objects, and a special installation on the Aesthetic Movement (
Highlights from the Gift of Barrie and Deedee Wigmore). Somehow all these styles are inter-related, and also resemble the Art Nouveau styles. Most of these were probably here when I was last here, but I found it much more remarkable this time, having toured two Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Chicago, and having recently seen the Art Nouveau attractions in Riga.
More notably, there is a new long-term installation called
Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, which fills a long-standing gap in the Met’s collection with a range of artifacts from the full geographic range of American Indians. Amazingly, this marks the first significant Native American art displayed in the museum’s American Wing; the only other objects are displayed near the Africa and Oceania galleries.
