Talking It Over

Enoch Wood Perry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Perry’s canvases conjured happy memories for urban viewers by celebrating a vanishing way of life. The Yankee farmers portrayed here, however, resemble George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and thus summoned up more than simple nostalgic reverie. By seating the two icons of ideal American citizenry in a barnlike interior, Perry honored rural values in the face of the pressures of massive immigration and the unprecedented industrial and economic growth the nation was then experiencing.

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