The Sensitive Plant
Maria Edgar
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Maria Edgar’s watercolor, her only known work, has been categorized as a mourning picture by at least one scholar. It includes some of the common features of such scenes, for example, the urn and the garden setting. Yet there is no sorrow or loss indicated in the composition. A symbol of modern womanhood, she stoops amid thriving roses and plants--foxgloves or figwort--and turns her attention to a potted mimosa, which is also called “the sensitive plant” for the way the leaves respond to stimulus. It seems likely that Edgar’s painting is not about death or grief, but about life and the nurturing power of the female touch.
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.