Sideboard

Alexander Roux

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Widespread economic and political upheaval forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Many emigrants, including the French cabinetmaker Alexander Roux, became successful entrepreneurs in cities across the United States. Roux’s New York City cabinetmaking firm quickly established a reputation for producing masterfully carved high-style furniture, such as this sideboard. Roux displayed the prototype for this piece at the 1853 New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, prompting a commission to make a pair of related sideboards for the Astor family—this one and its mate, now at the Newark Museum.

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