Editorial Review
The collection of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. More than one thousand paintings, six hundred sculptures, and 2,600 drawings - exceeding four thousand works in total by approximately nine hundred different artists- constitute an encyclopedic survey of fine art in America, from the late colonial period in the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. The collection has been assembled over more than a century, beginning almost immediately after the Museum's founding. (American paintings, sculpture, and drawings by artists born after 1878 are in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, and all photographs in the Department of Photographs.)
Extraordinary in quality and exhaustive in scope, the department's collection of paintings has impressive concentrations of portraits, landscapes, and narrative scenes, as well as notable works by America's foremost painters, including John Singleton Copley, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, and John Sloan. The sculpture collection is equally distinguished and is especially strong in Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts works.
Please note that the galleries for American Paintings and Sculpture will reopen in late 2011, following a major renovation. Many of the colonial American paintings are now installed in the period rooms and adjacent decorative arts galleries. Other masterworks remain on view in The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art. Learn more about the American Wing renovation project.
