Seneca Village—a vibrant nineteenth-century community of predominantly Black landowners and tenants—flourished in an area just west of The Met, in what is now Central Park. By the 1850s, the village comprised some fifty homes, three churches, multi…

While the interpretation of American Neoclassicism differed from one Atlantic coast city to the next, it typically drew from common sources.

Superb examples of interior design through the ages are on view in the period rooms at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From an ancient Roman bedroom excavated near Pompeii to a Louis XVI grand salon from eighteenth-century Paris to the Frank Lloyd Wright Room in the American Wing, these popular exhibition galleries can now be seen for the first time in book form. Thirty-four spectacular installations—some actual rooms taken from historic buildings and some recreations intended to show related works of decorative art in an authentic setting—offer a beautifully photographed grand tour through the history of interiors. From a twelfth-century cloister from the Pyrenees to eighteenth-century French and English parlors and boudoirs to Colonial and early nineteenth-century American dining rooms and libraries, the Metropolitan's collection of period rooms offers a wealth of fine furniture and decorative elements. An introduction by Museum director Philippe de Montebello explains the concept of period rooms at the Museum and how they have been developed, installed, and furnished over the past hundred years. Then, each room is depicted both in color photographs taken especially for this book and in lively narrative descriptions that include fascinating information about the original room from which the Museum's example is derived, the individuals who commissioned and carried out the decoration, and the era that the room represents. 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.

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.

Amelia Peck discusses the recent addition of touch-screen computers to the American Wing period rooms.

Georgian design, which was characterized by an adherence to theories of order, symmetry, and proportion drawn from classical models during the Renaissance, represented a significant departure from earlier English decorative traditions.

Despite the social and political upheaval, the Muromachi period was economically and artistically innovative. This epoch saw the first steps in the establishment of modern commercial, transportation, and urban developments.

With the decline of Ashikaga power in the 1560s, the feudal barons, or daimyos, began their struggle for control of Japan. The ensuing four decades of constant warfare are known as the Momoyama (Peach Hill) period.

The art and texts of the Old Assyrian period provide a deep view into the dynamic lives of individual people at the start of the second millennium B.C.