Collect Pond, New York City

Archibald Robertson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The natural pool Collect Pond was formerly located in lower Manhattan near present-day Foley Square. Robertson’s watercolor of the site exemplifies the formulaic method of drawing taught at the Columbian Academy of Painting in New York City, founded by the artist and his brother Alexander. Both the hill at left and the willow tree at right are rendered in highly stylized fashion, with broad contours and schematic curving lines. Spatial depth was achieved with swaths of dark wash in the foreground setting of the lighter forms in the distance. Indeed, the whole picture observes a kind of artistic etiquette embodied in the polite company of figures in the foreground.

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