Before Yesterday We Could Fly An Afrofuturist Period Room

Seneca Village—a vibrant nineteenth-century community of predominantly Black landowners and tenants—flourished just west of The Met's current location until the city used eminent domain to seize the land in 1857, displacing its residents to make room for the construction of Central Park. The Met's latest Bulletin, Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, imagines a different history in the form of a new type of installation that departs from traditionally Eurocentric period displays to present a fictional but resonant domestic space. Texts by Ian Alteveer, Hannah Beachler, Michelle Commander, and Sarah Lawrence honor the real, lived history of the Seneca Village residents, while also exploring works by Black creators from the eighteenth century to the present day through the empowering lens of Afrofuturism. Including images of new works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Roberto Lugo, and Cyrus Kabiru, as well as an original graphic novella by New York Times bestselling author and illustrator John Jennings, this publication foregrounds generations of Black creativity and looks forward to a resilient future.

Published to celebrate The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 150th anniversary, Making The Met, 1870–2020 examines the institution’s evolution from an idea—that art can inspire anyone who has access to it—to one of the most beloved global collections in the world. Focusing on key transformational moments, this richly illustrated book provides insight into the visionary figures and events that led The Met in new directions. Among the many topics explored are the impact of momentous acquisitions, the central importance of education and accessibility, the collaboration that resulted from international excavations, the Museum’s role in preserving cultural heritage, and its interaction with contemporary art and artists. Complementing this fascinating history are more than two hundred works that changed the very way we look at art, as well as rarely seen archival and behind-the-scenes images. In the final chapter, Met Director Max Hollein offers a meditation on evolving approaches to collecting art from around the world, strategies for reaching new and diverse audiences, and the role of museums today.

Superb examples of interior design through the ages are on view in the period room at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Supplementing the stunning photographs of the rooms are historical photographs and engravings and close-up shots of selected ornaments and pieces of furniture, enabling the reader to see details that are often inaccessible to Museum visitors.

Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

Born out of the sorrow of the slave, but passed on in hope, this collection of retold African-American folktales explores themes of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and the desire for freedom. Reprint. Coretta Scott King Award.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} Published to celebrate the reopening of The Met's André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments after a two-year renovation, this Bulletin tells the story of Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, whose unparalleled collection formed the department’s foundation. Sally B. Brown, Mary Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, explores how a mother of six without any musical training acquired over 3,600 musical instruments from around the world in the late nineteenth century. Mary Elizabeth also became an esteemed authority in the field, authoring the first catalogue of a musical instruments collection in the United States. This publication features works of art from her collection, roughly two-thirds of which are from non-European cultures, that attest to her groundbreaking deviation from the Western canon and exceptional ambition as a collector.

In Afro-Atlantic Flight Michelle D. Commander traces how post-civil rights Black American artists, intellectuals, and travelers envision literal and figurative flight back to Africa as a means by which to heal the dispossession caused by the slave trade. Through ethnographic, historical, literary, and filmic analyses, Commander shows the ways that cultural producers such as Octavia Butler, Thomas Allen Harris, and Saidiya Hartman engage with speculative thought about slavery, the spiritual realm, and Africa, thereby structuring the imaginary that propels future return flights. She goes on to examine Black Americans’ cultural heritage tourism in and migration to Ghana; Bahia, Brazil; and various sites of slavery in the US South to interrogate the ways that a cadre of actors produces “Africa” and contests master narratives. Compellingly, these material flights do not always satisfy Black Americans’ individualistic desires for homecoming and liberation, leading Commander to focus on the revolutionary possibilities inherent in psychic speculative returns and to argue for the development of a Pan-Africanist stance that works to more effectively address the contemporary resonances of slavery that exist across the Afro-Atlantic.

In his foreword, former New York governor and vice president of the United States Nelson A. Rockefeller remembers his first trip to Mexico in 1933 and his subsequent, life-long fascination with the Mexican people and their popular art. Rockefeller's collection of more than 3,000 pieces of Mexican folk art is widely considered to be the most exceptional in the U.S., and Folk Treasures of Mexico celebrates these icons, created from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, with more than 150 photos of the pieces, many of which are quite rare. This updated edition of the long out-of-print book focusing on this stunning collection of Mexican folk art contains a new foreword by Rockefeller's daughter, Ann Rockefeller Roberts, and a new prologue by Marion Oettinger, Jr., the director of the San Antonio Museum of Art, who wrote the principal text about the collection. Oettinger describes the objects according to function: utilitarian, ceremonial, decorative, or for play. Among the many noteworthy objects are a wooden-carved centurion helmet mask from the eighteenth century depicting a Roman guard, which is one of the few remaining masks of this type in existence, and a nineteenth century ceramic pitcher from Oaxaca that combines many stylistic techniques. Other objects include a variety of children's toys, clothing, and items for eating and drinking. First published in 1990, the book also contains the original preface by Rockefeller's daughter, who was instrumental in finding permanent homes for her father's collection, which can now be found in the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco. Including a glossary, bibliography, and chronology, Folk Treasures of Mexico is a must-read for anyone interested in Latin American art, culture, and history.