The Figge Art Museum presents the Virtual Tour “Across America: The Met" -- March 26.

Friday, March 26, 1 p.m.

Presented by the Figge Art Museum

On March 26, Figge Art Museum members are invited to hop on a computer and travel to the Big Apple in the virtual tour Across America: The Met – an online visit to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which Met docent Laura Conley will guide participants through highlights of the venue's American Art Collection.

Ever since its establishment in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired important examples of American art. A separate “American Wing” to display the domestic arts of the 17th to early 19th centuries opened in 1924, with painting and sculpture galleries and a skylit courtyard added in 1980. Today, the 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 – furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery – as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments. Monumental sculpture, stained glass, and architectural elements are installed in the Charles Engelhard Court; silver, gold, glass, and ceramics on the courtyard balconies. Meanwhile, narratives of American domestic architecture and furnishings from 1680 to 1915 are explored in 20 historical interiors, or period rooms. Changing rotations of painting, sculpture, works on paper, and textiles also appear throughout the wing.

After a period of closure for renovation, the Met's collection of American art returned to view in new galleries in January of 2012, with those galleries encompassing 30,000 square feet for the display of the museum's collection. Since September of 2014, the curator in charge of the American Wing has been Sylvia Youn, who previously held curatorial leadership positions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. At the Met, she has prioritized broadening the department’s collecting and programming to be more inclusive of underrepresented artists from across the continent – particularly women and people of color – and is currently working on exhibitions of Winslow Homer and the late-19th-century New York art world. She received a PhD and an MA in the history of art from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Italian from New York University.

The virtual presentation Across America: The Met will take place from 1 to 2 p.m. on March 26, and admission is $12.50 for the members-only event. For more information and to register, call (563)326-7804 or visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.

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