Temperance, but No Maine Law

Augustus Fay

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The "Gem Saloon," represented here, was housed in a hotel on the corner of Broadway and Anthony (now Worth) Street in New York, and known for containing the city's largest mirror. Mayor Fernando Wood and other notables are portrayed, and the title refers to the heated debate then raging over the regulation of alcohol. A temperance movement launched in 1850 by the mayor of Portland, Maine, resulted in a state bill that forbade all alcoholic purchases except for "medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes." Several other northern states and cities followed suit, including New York, with a prohibitory liquor law of 1854 vetoed by Governor Horatio Seymour. When Myron H. Clark replaced Seymour in 1855, a new "Maine Law" was passed, but never strictly enforced.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art