The Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the Pantheon

The Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the Pantheon

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The interior of the Pantheon, reconstructed as a theater, seen from the stage. Two opera dancers hold garlands of roses in the foreground. The theater is crowded with admiring spectators.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the PantheonThe Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the PantheonThe Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the PantheonThe Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the PantheonThe Prospect Before Us, Respectfully dedicated to those Singers, Dancers, & Musical Professors, who are fortunately engaged with the Proprietor of the Kings Theatre, at the Pantheon

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.