Inside The Met: The Curatorial Departments March 19, 2008

Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, visit us online or call 212 570 3949

Inside the Met: The Curatorial Departments
American Paintings and Sculpture
Morrison H. Heckscher, Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the American Wing
H. Barbara Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Curator
Carrie Rebora Barratt, Curator and Manager, The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art
Kevin J. Avery, Associate Curator
Thayer Tolles, Associate Curator

From its inception in 1870, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been committed to promoting the nation’s fine arts, owing to the strong support of such founding trustees as Frederic E. Church, Eastman Johnson, and J. Q. A. Ward, all renowned artists. In this lecture, Morrison H. Heckscher provides a brief introduction to the department’s history, and four curators of American Paintings and Sculpture present the fascinating stories behind the acquisition of several masterpieces. Carrie Rebora Barratt speaks about John Trumbull’s Sortie Made by the Garrison at Gibraltar (1789) and George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845); Kevin J. Avery focuses on Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) and Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes (1859); Thayer Tolles considers Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s two versions of Diana (1893); and H. Barbara Weinberg addresses John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1883–84) and Winslow Homer’s Gulf Stream (1899).

Official Website: http://www.metmuseum.org/tickets