Summer Flowers

Jerome B. Thompson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

To offset the trials of city living, wealthy nineteenth-century New Yorkers often escaped to rural estates, where--according to the architectural theorist Andrew Jackson Downing--the “humble roof, . . . shady porch, . . . verdant lawn, and smiling flowers offered a “barrier against vice, immorality, and bad habits.” Thompson’s cheerful view of a Gothic Revival-style Hudson River Valley home, seen at a distance behind an elegant family seated in a blossoming field, embodies Downing’s bucolic ideal.

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