Bathing Party

William P. Chappel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These swimmers are likely cooling off at a sandy beach known as Dandy Point, north of the shipyards where Thirteenth Street met the East River. Comments about urban swimming in this period often refer to rowdy groups of naked male youths, but Chappel illustrates what one historian later described as mixed groups—"the men at one spot the women at another, chang[ing] good garments for old ones." Still, some boys must have indeed been raucous, as the council passed a law in 1803 outlawing "the practice of swimming or playing and sporting in the water . . . between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m." on Sundays.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art