Auguste Rodin

Robert MacCameron

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In August 1910 MacCameron noted in his journal that he had visited "Rodin, the greatest of sculptors—he is a charming person—a splendid big head, with light grey warm creamy hair and beard. . . . I am [interested] in the idea of painting a good portrait of [him]." The likeness, completed by late September, shows the sculptor holding a model of his iconic work The Thinker. Rodin and MacCameron discussed sending the portrait to The Met, but it traveled instead to New York's Academy of Design and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute. Collector and financier J. Pierpont Morgan aquired it and, in 1912, he gave it to The Met, where it hung in a new gallery dedicated to Rodin.

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