Faith and Hope

Henry E. Sharp

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The mid-1850s saw the growth of a stained-glass industry on and around Broadway, the primary commercial district of Manhattan, partly because numerous churches were being built in New York during the period, requiring the industry’s services. Sharp joined this movement in the early 1850s, when he established himself as a glass stainer, in partnership with William Steele, at 216 Sixth Avenue. Sharp provided this window and several others for Saint Ann’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, a grand Gothic Revival structure built by the firm Renwick and Sands. (James Renwick Jr. designed Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan shortly before Saint Ann’s was completed.) The richly colored windows, typical of the period, feature full-size figures within an elaborate Gothic canopy.

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