Mercury and Turtle

Mercury and Turtle

Albert E. Harnisch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Little is known about Harnisch's career as a sculptor. He was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied with the French sculptor Joseph A. Bailly. Before establishing a studio in Rome in 1869, he exhibited several works at the Pennsylvania Academy, including "Mercury and Turtle" in 1862. That may have been a plaster model, which the sculptor then took to Italy with him, and translated to marble in 1879. The youthful Mercury, identified by his cap sits with head bent, peering downward.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.