Allison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We just heard another installment in our series, 100 Works of Art for 100 Years, our nod to WNYC's centennial celebration this year. But WNYC isn't the only New York institution celebrating its 100th birthday this year. Next up, we're going to talk about another one from the art world. The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was established in 1924 and displays art from throughout the nation's history, from colonial America to the 20th century. Works and objects include painting, sculpture, furniture, jewelry, and a whole lot more. A special installation called the American Wing at 100 is now on view in the space with upcoming events commemorating the anniversary. Joining me now is Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman, curator-in-charge at the Met's American Wing. Welcome to All Of It.

Sylvia Yount: Thank you for having me.

Allison Stewart: Listeners, have you visited the Met's American Wing? Do you have favorite object, artwork, or room in the space, or any questions for its curator? Give us a call or text to us at 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. The Met Museum was established at its current site in 1880, so it's been there around 54 years before the American Wing was established. What place did American artwork and design have in the museum before the American Wing?

Sylvia Yount: That's a great question, Alison, because I think a lot of people think it all began in 1924, but in fact, the Met was collecting contemporary American art and design from the time of its founding in 1870. But the paintings and sculpture were really shown with European art, and it wasn't until 1924 that focus was turned to decorative arts and material culture. That's what was really novel about what was happening in the north end of the building in November of 1924.

Allison Stewart: What kind of art and design was in the collection before the official American Wing was established?

Sylvia Yount: Mostly European art. There were some works collected in different departments. We didn't have as many- the 17 curatorial departments we have today, usually divided by media but also by culture. Then it was mostly by media. There were some works of sculpture and other kinds of ceramic work that were coming into the collection at that time and just shown again in the context of other European works.

Allison Stewart: Why was the American Wing established?

Sylvia Yount: It was established because the founders at the time, Emily and Robert de Forest, really felt like there was a story to be told about the material culture and the history of this country. There was a very focused didactic purpose in founding the American wing in 1924, really using objects mostly drawn from the 13 Colonies and presented in the then novel context of historical interiors or period rooms. A real goal to teach what was then termed by the founders to be the proper American history to many, many new immigrants who had arrived in New York City in the years before that moment in the '20s.

Allison Stewart: When the American Wing was founded, it featured furniture, objects, metalworks, ceramics. When and why did the Wing expand out to more artwork?

Sylvia Yount: Well, as I said, we were collecting paintings, the sculpture of so-called fine arts at the same time we were building those decorative arts collections, but they weren't brought together under one wing until the 1960s. Then if you've been to the American Wing today, at the far end of the north end of the building at the Met on 5th Avenue and around 84th street, you will see that beautiful courtyard, the Engelhard Court, and that wasn't covered until 1980. That's really when the full department, the full range gamut of historical American art and design were brought together.

Allison Stewart: The Met's American Wing is marking its 100th anniversary this year with a new installation. I'm speaking with Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman curator-in-charge of the Met's American Wing, and we are taking your calls. Have you been to the American American Wing? What piece of artwork or room did you enjoy? Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Okay. I'm going to ask the obvious question. What does American art mean?

Sylvia Yount: Oh, such an easy question, right? Well, the way we're defining American art at the Met right now is certainly in a much more expansive, and I would say, hemispheric terms. When we were founded in the '20s, we were really focused on the art of British America, primarily the 17th and 18th century, as you said, the colonial and federal period. Then we moved into the 19th century, but still largely by Euro-American artists. That really shifted about 10 years ago when we added for the first time colonial Latin American art. Then in 2018, we added historical Native American art to the collection. We can actually say we do have work that runs the gamut, featuring the makers from across North America, African American, Asian American, Latin American, Native American, and of course, continuing to build the Euro American representation. It's a very different kind of American definition. Seeing it in a lot of museums across the country now. Certainly, Brooklyn just unveiled their fantastic new reinstallation. You'll see the resonances there as well. But it's exciting that we're in the museum world at this time and really starting to rethink and expand these definitions, really focusing on much more inclusive and more complicated definitions of American identity and history.

Allison Stewart: One of the highlights of the American Wing is the period rooms. These rooms decorated to be historically representative. What kind of research goes into getting these rooms historically accurate?

Sylvia Yount: Well, in fact, those were the founding collections of the American Wing. That's how we opened on three floors showing the decorative art material from the 17th and 18th century in these architectural settings. That was considered kind of a new European innovation at that time, but it was really new in the United States. The American Wing set the tone for thinking about our histories through object lessons, through this material culture, and had a great influence on every other institution across the country at that time focused on the American past. The research continues. We're a lot more, I would say, self conscious and maybe transparent about what is actually authentic to the period. What is much more a theatrical setting or interior.

Some of your visitors may or your listeners may have come to see the collaboration we did with the Costume Institute in 2022 called In America, in which we actually brought in historical costumes into those settings, but also had contemporary film directors create their own visual narratives in those spaces. They're very immersive, they're very creative, imaginative spaces, but there is a lot of serious historical research that goes into them as well. We have a fantastic website on the American Wing where you can dig very deep into those layers of history and layers of storytelling that we share in those rooms.

Allison Stewart: Yes, from the room, something- I looked at them and I looked very carefully, and I thought, you know what? You could really tell what was important to people at the time.

Sylvia Yount: At the time, yes.

Allison Stewart: The thing that really caught my eye was a room from Virginia, and it showed- it was quite opulent, and it showed how grand life could be during slavery. I thought, it really takes your brain to a different place. What else have you learned from the rooms?

Sylvia Yount: Yes. I think certainly with that Richmond Room, it wasn't actually called the Richmond Room when it was first installed. It's become to be known as that, and something that all the curators have been very focused on certainly in the last decade, to tell those multilayered stories. Those challenging histories as well as those more celebratory histories, and a lot of that wasn't done in the past. When you come to the rooms today, you will see those different threads.

It's fair to say, of course, these rooms are mostly drawn from elite cultures, from elite homes, mostly from the Northeast. We do have a smattering of some Southern rooms, but it's not meant to be the most comprehensive discussion or display of material culture from throughout our history. But the first room is from New England, very early 18th century or 17th century room, and then we go up to a spectacular Frank Lloyd Wright room from the Middle west from the early 20th century. That's the chronological span of the rooms in the wing.

Allison Stewart: Let's hit call. Camilla is calling us from Manhattan. Hi, Camilla. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Camilla: Hi, there. I love the American Wing. It's really my favorite part of the museum. I love the Frank Lloyd Wright Room, and particularly memorable for me was I used to attend, when I was a child, a place called All Angels' Church. You guys took the stone steps, basic- whatever that's called, the podium from the church, and it's there. My question is, the idea of saving pieces of New York City or anywhere really, that are beautiful, architectural, even things like windows or these things which get lost, gates, et cetera. I think that's a really important mission for- in historical preservation.

I'm just curious about what you guys are doing in that way, and I just want to say thank you for the incredibly beautiful American Wing. Just to be there is so peaceful. I love the spaciousness of it. There's a modern aspect to it, but there's also a classical feel to it. It's just really gorgeous and really a pleasure. Not to mention- sorry, one last thing- is those Tiffany windows, which are out of this universe.

Allison Stewart: I think Camilla's a new head of your PR department. I'm not sure.

Sylvia Yount: Thank you, Mila. Thank you. Well, and I love that you really underlined the fact that in that courtyard, the Englehard Court I mentioned earlier, it is filled with these objects of lost New York, as you're saying. That preservationist impulse, it was so critical to the vision of the founders in the '20s, a decade really, about looking backwards as well as looking forwards when we think of this modernist moment. But our founders were some of the earliest proponents of preservation in the city, and they felt so strongly that to better understand our history, you needed to tell it with objects. You needed to really create that sense of the material landscape for people. That's why there was such a focus on showing those decorative arts in the period rooms.

But yes, the fabulous pulpit from All Saints, the torchieres that were actually at the bottom of the entrance, the original steps to the Met on Fifth Avenue were there. The Tiffany windows, so many beautiful windows. I will just mention, I think it was mentioned in the previous segment with Thelma Golden, someone referenced the brand new Tiffany window that was just installed actually a couple weeks ago, and it debuted to the public as part of our new centennial American Wing at 100 just on Tuesday, actually. It's the Linden Hall Garden landscape window, a tripartite window that is now installed at the south end of the courtyard under the Tiffany Logia from his studio in Long Island that burned again. Another example of the preservation. It looks like it's always meant to be in that space. It's a truly spectacular window, and we're bringing a different lens to talking about the Tiffany windows.

We have great strength in Tiffany here, of course, but we know it was designed by Tiffany's lead designer, Agnes Northrop. Commissioned by this extraordinary woman who's the wife of a Coke magnate outside of Pittsburgh. It's really a story that we're talking about the lens of how we can talk about women, all the women involved in Tiffany Studio's work, certainly the commission of the piece and then the production of the piece. We encourage everyone to come and spend some time in this really extraordinary new window and how it beautifies an already beautiful destination space in the wing.

Allison Stewart: Let's talk to Tricia from Brooklyn. Hi, Tricia. Thanks for calling All Of It

Tricia: Hi, thanks for having me talk. I'm just so excited about the American wing. It's just things like streetlights and things like that are not ephemeral, and the fact that this is our history, our immigrants' history, our resources, everything, and brown furniture being like the ultimate green furniture. It's the way forward is to preserve-- These forests will never be there again. But I called, I told your person that I was on my way to work. I work at night. I saw this little wooden, tacky table that caught my eye on the way back. It was still there. It's being thrown out. I decided to bring it home and clean it up and bring it to [unintelligible 00:12:53] doing a lot of wonderful stuff with recycling.

I brought it home, I cleaned it up. It has burn marks on it because someone had put years of incense in it. I Went to the American Wing to the Shaker Room, and I went, oh my goodness. No wonder it called out to me. No wonder I thought that little wooden knob was tacky. It was a shaker table. I wouldn't have figured that out on my own. I went there recently and the light was coming through the courtyard, and it was beautiful. I'm so excited.

I'd also love to hear about how Morrison Heckscher shepherded into- took us into the new century with these things that were going to be de acquisition and are now there for us to see and to talk about and to break down. But thank you so much. So excited about the America Wing, and I'm so excited about the Native American- the real Americans are being included. Thank you.

Sylvia Yount: That's right. Thank you. I should mention, yes, I'm thrilled to hear everyone is so excited about the furniture collections because they were our founding, most mature collections, and we've recently reinstalled a lot of that 18th century material in very a more contemporary design. You can really focus on the artistry, the carving, the materiality of the pieces, but we are also very well known, of course, for our extraordinary paintings collections, and sculptures collections, and drawings collections. That is a big part of the current new reinstallation. We've rethought our second floor galleries, where you can see that full gamut from colonial to early 20th century. We also have some wonderful loans that are a part of the installation. Again, just a reference to the earlier segment and Thelma's mention of the Tanner that was really the inspiration for the title of our colleague, Akili Tommasino's Flight into Egypt show.

We're thrilled to have not only a study for that painting, while we are lending that painting to Akili's show, which opens another week or so, but we also have a very special two year loan from Art Bridges of Henry Tanner's one of only two major works of Black subject life- of black life at the turn of the 20th century, The Thankful Poor. That will be on view in the American Wing for two years. It's an extraordinary, very complex, beautiful painting that we're presenting in the context of the Colombian Exposition. One of our new gallery focuses is on the World's Fairs, and thinking about a talk that Tanner actually gave in Chicago in 1894 on Black representation, and thinking about the context for understanding that painting in that way.

There's a lot of new things to see. Certainly our canonic collections are here. All of our favorite chestnuts, but most Importantly, I think, put in dialogue with some newer additions that have come into the collection by artists you haven't heard of. We've really been focusing on building our strengths, and women artists, and artists of color. Some who have always been or been long representative in the collection, but some who will be new to you. We're excited about those kinds of conversations that can arise now as visitors go through the galleries.

Allison Stewart: I did want to ask you about indigenous artists. It was presented as the first time the museum in 2018, the museum's history, that these pieces were shown as American art rather than indigenous art. There was some criticism that took issues with objects that were art were maybe funereal objects that maybe you didn't have the guidance you should have. How do you think about the tensions between the efforts at justice within the art systems?

Sylvia Yount: Well, we're really privileged to be able to show that material in the Wing because of that extraordinary gift from Charles and Valerie Diker. In fact, there are no very sensitive pieces in that collection. We have no funerary objects in that collection. It's mostly work from the 18th. The earliest work is really 18th Anishinaabe pieces up until the mid-20th century. They resonate quite beautifully in those terms with the scope, the chronological scope of the American Wing. We hired a curator for the first time in the Met's history. I was able to bring in a curator in 2020, Patricia Marroquin Norby, to oversee those collections. The program has continued to develop to have historical works in dialogue with modern and contemporary works by leading contemporary and native artists.

We're very sensitive to all the different contexts in which those works can be understood and presented. The fact that we can now make a very clear statement about this work belongs here in the wing. Some might call it material culture, some might call it art. These are all artists. There's incredible creative expressions and the spiritual qualities certainly of the works as well. It has allowed us to tell a much broader and more complicated narrative about American art, and history, and identity. We are very, very thrilled to have that material here on the Wing.

Allison Stewart: Let's talk to Maya from Manhattan. Hi, Maya.

Maya: Hi. Can you hear me?

Allison Stewart: Yeah. You're on.

Maya: Hi, Allison. I treasure you. First time. Long time. So happy to have you back.

Allison Stewart: Thank you.

Maya: I'm a professor of art and art history, and I'm also a painter, and I was just at the Met on Monday in the American Wing. There's a hidden gem that I wanted to share with everybody who hasn't seen it. It's a really small room full of embroidery by young girls from their education, and it shows the trajectory of what they were learning and how their minds were being opened up in early America, and how they gradually had access to more education and more information. Of course, you have to put the caveat that most of these girls were, you know, probably privileged, probably White, and that's why they had access to education and could devote their time to this. But it's wonderful to see work by young girls, especially as young as eight years old in the Met's collection there.

Allison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling.

Sylvia Yount: That's right.

Allison Stewart: We only have about 45 seconds left, so I'll ask the hard question. Do you have a favorite piece?

Sylvia Yount: Do I have a favorite piece? Oh, so many favorite pieces. But I think this week I've really been drawn to Winslow Homer's fabulous Cannon Rock, which is one of the most modernist paintings he ever did. It's a view of the Atlantic Ocean from his studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, but it just seems to have this endless, endless, soothing quality that you can really lose yourself in. It's also being presented in a new way in our galleries really is a look toward the modernist moment. We think of Homer as being this classic late 19th century painter, but he was also experimenting with modernist approaches. It's something that [unintelligible 00:19:20] take a look at this week.

Allison Stewart: Make sure people know the Mets American Wing is marking its 100th anniversary. Sylvia Yount, thank you so much for being with us.

Sylvia Yount: Thank you so much, Allison. Thank you.

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