McGuire, an engineer by training and the great grandnephew of President James Madison, amassed an unprecedented collection of fifteenth-century Northern European prints.  "He saw the ancient pieces of paper … as no mere curiosities to be owned or puttered over but as sacred relics of a long vanished past, surrounded by a mystery and a charm that never palled…" At his death in 1930, he bequeathed his entire collection to the Met, which includes rare impressions from block books, early single-leaf woodcuts, and metalcuts from Germany and the Netherlands.

New York's Armstrong family included three talented artists in the opening years of the twentieth century, and the Museum received important examples of their work from descendants in 2008 and 2010. Stained glass designs by Maitland Armstrong and his daughter Helen arrived first, followed by albums of botanical drawings by daughter Margaret. Between 1909 and 1914, Margaret Armstrong trekked from California to British Columbia to collect and draw specimens used to illustrate her Field Book of Western Wildflowers (1915).

This selection highlights key works from important collections of modern and contemporary prints. Leslie and Johanna Garfield, William S. Lieberman, and Florence and Joseph Singer each built unique and important collections that add greatly to the Met. Over several decades, Leslie and Johanna Garfield created an internationally renowned collection of modern and contemporary prints, with a specific focus on British modernist prints, in particular, the colored linocuts made by Grosvenor school artists during the interwar years. William Lieberman, also a prolific and active art collector, had a particular passion for works on paper; he donated 767 works to the Museum, with nearly 400 pieces coming to the Department of Drawings and Prints. Lieberman was close to numerous artists and, in addition to collecting works by established figures such as Joan Miró, was also supportive of younger artists, such as Kiki Smith, donating sixteen of her prints. Joseph I. Singer and his wife, Florence, were discerning collectors of contemporary American prints; they gifted over one hundred works, including thirty-one important early prints and portfolios by Jasper Johns, which the Singers acquired and donated soon after they were published.

Cyril E. Power (British, London 1872–1951 London). The Eight, 1930. Linocut, 13 in. × 9 1/4 in. (33 × 23.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Leslie and Johanna Garfield, 2019 (2019.415). © Estate of Cyril Power. All Rights Reserved, 2020 / Bridgeman Images

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry and Louisine Havemeyer had assembled one of the greatest collections of art in America. At her death, Mrs. Havemeyer left The Met one of the most magnificent gifts of works of art ever made to a museum by a single individual. Best known for its Impressionist paintings, the Havemeyer gift also included more than two hundred works on paper. Among these were many of Rembrandt's renowned landscape prints as well as those of other masters such as Claude Lorrain, Camille Corot and Seymour Haden.

The collectors Frits and Rita Markus settled in New York after having fled their native Holland during World War II. Their collection contained works by important artists of the Dutch Golden Age, which were bequeathed to the Museum in 2005.

In the mid-twentieth century, the Museum's holdings of British drawings grew through generous bequests from George D. Pratt (1869–1935) and Walter C. Baker (1893–1971). Brooklyn-based Pratt was a philanthropist and Met trustee, while Baker served as the institution's vice-president. Their collections ranged from a Roman landscape by Richard Wilson, to an early portrait drawing by Thomas Lawrence, to mountain subjects by J. M. W. Turner and John Ruskin.

When the Museum's Print Department opened in 1916, gifts from the brothers Arthur and Paul J. Sachs ensured that the collection included Mary Cassatt's groundbreaking 1891 set of ten color aquatints. Both men worked at the family firm of Goldman Sachs, with Paul moving on in 1915 to become a curator at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. To enable Met visitors to trace Cassatt’s unfolding process, Arthur collected early states printed in black, while Paul assembled a full set of developed color impressions.

In 1938, collector Mary Martin bequeathed her extraordinary collection of silhouettes to The Met. Martin's gift expanded the Museum's holdings of eighteenth and nineteenth century material to include works of a democratic nature, as silhouette portraits were commissioned and collected by people of many strata of society. Included in the exhibition are profiles of George and Martha Washington by their granddaughter, Eleanor Custis; portraits by August Edouart and William Henry Brown, the foremost silhouette artists of the nineteenth century; and recent works by Kara Walker and William Kentridge that draw on the historical silhouette tradition.

Jean Riddell, a devoted collector of paper ephemera, donated hundreds of greeting cards and valentines to the Met in 1981. Prized among the collection are nineteenth-century cards from Central Europe expressing messages of love and friendship and commemorating the New Year, name days, and other holidays. Attributed to Johannes Endletzberger, the leading producer of cards of this type, they are made of precious materials such as mother of pearl, and are rendered with a breathtaking level of craftsmanship.