The Bridge

Albert Pinkham Ryder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The Bridge," done on gilded leather, shares the horizontal format and the thin paint application of "The Smuggler's Cove" (09.58.2). This panoramic landscape has been said to combine fragments of New York scenery that Ryder would have known: a bit of the skyline as seen from Central Park, and High Bridge, which spans the Harlem River. Despite these possible references to specific sites, "The Bridge" is still imaginative rather than literal. Its detachment from the appearance of nature looks forward to a modernist approach to picture making.

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