Enfilade

From the press release for the presentation and series of exhibitions:

America 250 at the MFAH

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1 July 2026 — 3 January 2027

Organized by Kaylin Weber and Christine Gervais

Joshua Johnson (ca. 1765–after 1825), Lady on a Red Sofa, 1820–25, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 inches (MFAH, 2026.5).

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston marks the 250th anniversary of America’s founding with a roster of more than 70 artworks that speak to the American experience from across its campus and collections—from antiquities to global modern and contemporary art. Beginning 1 July 2026, visitors to the MFAH main campus and its two decorative-arts house museums, Rienzi and Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, can map their own pathway, indoors and out, guided to the artworks and newly created audio stops and labels that discuss each of them from this historical and cultural perspective.

Comments Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, “The collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston take pride of place within our galleries and our curators are continually engaging with and revisiting these works of art. On the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary, we saw a singular opportunity to look at our collections and select objects that reflect the multitudes of individuals who have contributed to the identity of our nation. The curators’ choices will allow our visitors to experience our collections framed within a series of illuminating and sometimes surprising narratives.”

The America 250 presentation has been organized by Dr. Kaylin H. Weber, The Lora Jean Kilroy Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and by Christine Gervais, MFAH Curator for Decorative Arts and the Fredricka Crain Director of Rienzi.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

A New Nation: The Early United States as Reflected in Books and Objects

from the Powell Library and the Bayou Bend Collection

Kitty King Powell Library, MFAH, 1 May — 29 August 2026

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this display features books and objects from the early years of the United States representing various achievements and aspects of the period. The first encyclopedia printed in America by Thomas Dobson celebrated the country’s new identity, its history, and geography. It also presented the latest international technological and scientific discoveries that supported economic development. Other works demonstrate the importance of maintaining the military strength and strategic alliances that enabled the victory over Britain and that would also be needed to protect the citizens’ hard-won liberty. Surveying instruments and manuals assisted the country’s rapid expansion into new territory. Items related to Benjamin Franklin represent the importance of the Founding Fathers to the society and culture of the new nation.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

George Washington: America’s Enduring Icon

Bayou Bend, MFAH, 11 February — 22 November 2026

George Washington: America’s Enduring Icon includes objects from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries featuring images of George Washington during his lifetime, as well as many that mourned or honored him after his death. On view at the MFAH house museum Bayou Bend, the exhibition examines the many ways that Americans have recognized, honored, celebrated, memorialized, and appropriated the memory of Washington.

Charles II Ballin (1661–1754), Paire de chandeliers
(Paris: Musée du Louvre, photo by Julien Vidal)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

From the press release for the exhibition:

The Michel Lacoste Donation to the Musée du Louvre:

French Metalwork from Pierre Mangot to Jean-Élisée Puiforcat

Musée du Louvre, Paris, 26 June — 11 January 2027

Curated by Anne Foray-Carlier

The Louvre has opened a special exhibition devoted to a major promised donation from collector Michel Lacoste, bringing together 100 pieces of French silverwork from the 16th to the 18th century. The Michel Lacoste Donation to the Musée du Louvre: French Metalwork from Pierre Mangot to Jean-Élisée Puiforcat will be on view in the museum’s Sully Wing, Room 605, until 11 January 2027. For more than six months, visitors will be able to see the Lacoste pieces displayed together alongside the Louvre’s own holdings of silver and ceramics.

The donation, formalized in November 2025, reflects decades of collecting by Lacoste, the youngest son of French tennis legend René Lacoste, whose nickname ‘the Crocodile’ became the emblem of the famous sportswear brand founded in 1933. Because Michel Lacoste is a Swiss national, the gift was structured as a deferred donation of existing property, meaning the works will become property of the French State upon his death. For now, the Louvre is giving the public a rare opportunity to see the collection as a whole.

Jean-Baptiste Loir, Vase à deux anses en argent (Silver Two-Handled Vase), 1701–02 (Paris: Musée du Louvre, photo by Julien Vidal).

The 100 works represent roughly a quarter of the silver collection assembled by Lacoste since the 2000s. Chosen in close consultation with the Louvre’s Department of Decorative Arts, the pieces were selected to complement and enrich the museum’s existing holdings, particularly in the area of 17th-century French silverwork. Nearly a quarter of the donation consists of Parisian and provincial works from that century, a field in which examples have become increasingly scarce on the art market.

The display also introduces important names not yet represented in the Louvre’s collection, including Jean-Baptiste Chéret, Pierre-François Bonnestrenne, and Joseph-Théodore Vancombert. Other pieces deepen the museum’s representation of celebrated masters such as Nicolas Delaunay, Claude II Ballin, François-Thomas Germain, and Jacques-Nicolas Roëttiers.

To make room for the donation, the Louvre has reworked the existing presentation in Room 605. Some objects have been temporarily removed, while others from storage have been added to create visual and historical dialogues with Lacoste’s pieces. A colorful scenographic design helps visitors immediately identify the works from the donation and see them in relation to the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition is curated by Anne Foray-Carlier, Senior Heritage Curator, Department of Decorative Arts.

One of the most notable aspects of Lacoste’s choices is the attention given to provincial centers of French silverwork in the 17th and 18th centuries. While many of these works drew inspiration from Parisian models, they also reveal local originality, technical confidence, and a refined sense of form.

Lacoste’s passion for silverwork began with a catalogue. As a young man, he was given the sale catalogue of the famed Puiforcat collection by his maternal grandmother. The auction, planned for 1955, never took place because the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos acquired most of the works and later donated them to the Louvre with reservation of usufruct. That gift transformed the museum’s holdings in French silverwork at a time when the collection was still relatively limited.

Captivated by the Puiforcat collection and by the figure of Louis-Victor Puiforcat as a collector, Lacoste began visiting auction houses, meeting specialized dealers, and building relationships with experts and art historians. His first major acquisitions came during the celebrated sales of the David David-Weill collection in the 1970s. Although he sold part of that early collection in 1999, he soon began collecting again.

With this donation, Lacoste is now sharing a lifelong passion with the public and helping secure the future of a group of works that speak to the elegance, technical brilliance, and historical depth of French silverwork. The choice of the Louvre feels especially fitting. The museum already holds much of the Puiforcat collection that first inspired Lacoste, and with this new donation, that story of collecting, transmission, and public heritage comes full circle.

Thomas Sully, The Passage of the Delaware, 1819, oil on canvas, 147 × 207 inches
(Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 03.1079)

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

Opening soon at the MFABoston:

America at 250

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opening 19 June 2026

The MFA’s major reinstallation of the 18th-century Art of the Americas galleries will integrate art from across North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean—including works by Native American and Indigenous makers—to present a broader view of cultural exchange across the continent during a pivotal time in history. The galleries feature more than 400 objects—including icons of the MFA’s collection, long unseen works, and new acquisitions—that range from the monumental to the miniature.

Paul Revere Jr., Sons of Liberty Bowl, 1768, silver (MFA Boston).

A silver bowl. A Founding Father memorialized at monumental scale. A charismatic silversmith considering his craft. A towering mahogany desk and bookcase. Certain paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and works on paper from the MFA’s Art of the Americas art collection, along with the artists who created them, played a pivotal role in shaping the early history of the United States. Today, as we approach 250 years since the country’s founding, they likewise have a unique ability to recount and reflect that history while also inviting us to reconsider it.

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of American Independence, the MFA is reimagining its 18th-century galleries on level one of the Art of the Americas Wing for the first time since they opened in 2010. The new display, which opens in June 2026, brings together works from across the Americas—integrating Native and non-native, North, South, and Central American, and Caribbean art—and explores how artists have contributed to, or in some cases resisted, ideas of nationhood and identity. Visitors can immerse themselves in a range of stories and experiences, discovering the interconnectedness of the Americas and its history, institutions, and people.

Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished portrait of George Washington (1796)—the foundational image of the nation’s first president in the public imagination—offers viewers a prescient reminder that democracy is constant work in progress. An early piece of American protest art, Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl (1768) honors a group of Massachusetts rebels who paved the way for the Revolution. A ceramic jar (1857) by the enslaved potter and poet David Drake exemplifies literacy as an act of resistance in the decades before the Civil War. Thomas Sully drew on artistic traditions of heroism for The Passage of the Delaware (1819), which portrays George Washington in a dramatic scene of bravery. Meanwhile, a recently acquired work by Alan Michelson, a Mohawk member of Six Nations of the Grand River, offers a contemporary critique of Washington, who was known to the Mohawk Nation as ‘Town Destroyer’. These and the many other works on view reveal a past in dialogue with the present and propose endless possibilities for assessing history as we look ahead to the future.

Excelsior with Allegorical Figures of Liberty and Justice, late 18th century.

◊    ◊    ◊    ◊    ◊

This summer the museum will also present its own unique copy of the Declaration, as Jennifer Schuessler reports in The New York Times (5 June 2026) . . .

“For generations, the institution (formerly the New-York Historical Society) has quietly held a rare, unattributed broadside of the Declaration, one of only a handful with no printer’s name attached. From June 18 to July 5, it will be on public display for the first time, along with a tentative attribution, to a New York City printer named Samuel Loudon.”

From the press release for the exhibition:

Revolutionary Women

The New York Historical, 29 May — 25 October 2026

Curated by Anna Danziger Halperin, Tessa Bangs, Isabelle Held, Rachel Pitkin, and Lauren Cain

Commemorating the nation’s semiquincentennial year, The New York Historical presents Revolutionary Women, a new exhibition on view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery. Moving beyond the myths and legends that have long shaped narratives of the American founding, this exhibition draws on extensive research in The Historical’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library to illuminate the lives of the women who helped define the American experiment. Through the close examination of overlooked primary sources—including letters, financial ledgers, and archaeological artifacts such as shoe soles and children’s toys excavated from military camps—Revolutionary Women reconstructs a compelling, evidence-based reappraisal of the 18th century, positioning women as central actors in the political, social, and economic transformations of the era.

“To understand the history of our nation, we must look at what is revealed in the margins of the traditional narrative,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO, The New York Historical. “This exhibition moves past symbolism to center the real expertise and labor of women who navigated a world of blurred allegiances to help found the United States. By unearthing these hidden contributions, we hope to shift how the American Revolution is understood for generations to come.”

At its core, the exhibition cuts through 250 years of mythmaking to reveal the documented realities behind iconic Revolutionary-era women. It spotlights figures such as Deborah Sampson, whose story of military enlistment was amplified in early print culture, alongside Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley Peters, who wielded Enlightenment ideals to expose the contradictions of a male-dominated republic. The exhibition also dismantles enduring legends like ‘Molly Pitcher’, revealing the figure likely to have been a composite of several women, including Margaret Corbin (‘Captain Molly’), the first woman to receive a federal pension after being wounded in combat, as confirmed by military and Board of War records. Drawing on rich archival evidence, including a public tribute from George Washington to widows who helped American prisoners, Revolutionary Women replaces folklore with a vivid, verifiable account of women’s central role in the time of America’s founding.

Using the New York region as a microcosm of the broader struggle for independence, the exhibition reveals the breadth of women’s economic and civic influence in a contested landscape. As men went to war, women assumed control of businesses, carried intelligence across military lines, and sustained the conflict through medical and logistical support. Archival materials, including the business records of merchant Mary Alexander, underscore women’s longstanding participation in transatlantic trade networks. Evidence from early ledgers of the Tontine Coffee House—the heart of early New York’s financial district—further documents women such as Rebecca Gomez as active investors and stakeholders, offering a powerful corrective to narratives that have long excluded women from the growing early American financial system.

For women of color and Indigenous women, whose voices were often suppressed by dominant narratives, Revolutionary Women reinterprets traditional sources to foreground their agency and resilience, telling the story of individuals like Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman, whose court case, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), set the legal precedent to abolish slavery in Massachusetts. Molly Brant, a Mohawk woman of the Wolf Clan, chose loyalty to the British over the Revolutionary forces, believing that it offered the best chance to protect Haudenosaunee lands from colonial expansion. The letter granting Brant a pension from the British government for her diplomatic service is on view. Meanwhile, soldiers’ orderly books and diaries from the Sullivan Campaign, while recording the destruction of Haudenosaunee lands, inadvertently preserve evidence of Indigenous women’s agricultural knowledge and authority.

Personal relationships are also explored in the exhibition. On display is a love poem written by Patriot Major Aquila Giles, who met his future wife, Eliza Shipton, the niece of a Loyalist, after he was captured. The star-crossed lovers secretly exchanged letters, and eloped in 1780 to thwart their impending separation. A woman’s shoe sole, children’s toys, and other archaeological evidence mark the presence of women and children in military camps and in occupied New York.

In the post-war years, women turned to the emerging legal system to assert their rights and redefine the boundaries of citizenship. Court records and legal depositions, like the property lawsuits of Elizabeth Rutgers, who sued for back rent when her brewery was occupied during the British occupation, demonstrate that women actively challenged the limits of the law.

The exhibition concludes by examining how women played a decisive role in building the social and economic infrastructure of the new nation. In the absence of robust public services, they established philanthropic and educational institutions that bound the city and nation together, while their wealth and labor provided an invisible backbone to the early republic’s economy. Acting as traders, financial participants, and diplomatic intermediaries, women sustained the nation’s daily operations, an often unrecognized foundation that Revolutionary Women brings to light, recasting their expertise as central rather than peripheral to the Revolutionary era. Through materials ranging from a sampler made at the New-York African Free-School to a portrait of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, a founder of the Orphan Asylum Society—Revolutionary Women ultimately challenges audiences to reconsider whose stories endure, and to ask a vital question: How would you tell the story of the Revolution?

Revolutionary Women is curated by Anna Danziger Halperin, director for the Center for Women’s History; Tessa Bangs, Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History and Public History; Isabelle Held, Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and LGBTQ+ History; and Rachel Pitkin and Lauren Cain, both Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Awardees in Women’s History.

From the press release for the exhibition:

The Declaration of Independence: Rare Americana from the Collection

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 5 May — 13 September 2026

Declaration of Independence (Dunlap Broadside), 1776, printed in Philadelphia by John Dunlap (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, PML 77518).

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Morgan Library & Museum presents a select group of important materials relating to the history of the founding of the nation in the rotunda of the historic library from May 5 until September 13, 2026. Placed in conversation with each other, the six works in this installation provide a snapshot of a robust area of the Morgan’s collection that speaks to the vitality of the country in its nascence.

The centerpiece of the installation is a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence. Known as the “Dunlap Broadside,” this artifact of the nation’s founding was typeset by John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776 for distribution to “the several Assemblies, Conventions & Committees or Councils of Safety and to the several Commanding Officers of the Continental troops.” Among the rarest of the rare in this category, it is one of only twenty-six recorded copies surviving today. As a foundational document it is put in context with other important works from the period. Thomas Paine’s radical polemic Common Sense, for example, published earlier that year, gave the nation’s founders a solid rationale for a break from monarchical rule based on the principles of reason.

Also included are correspondences from key figures of the Revolutionary period. A letter dated June 29, 1776, from Patrick Henry, written upon his appointment as Governor of Virginia, reveals the combined sense of humility and anxiety he felt regarding his ability to lead the infant commonwealth through the war effort to combat the “Tyranny of the British King.” Another letter from Martha Washington to her sister Anna Maria ‘Nancy’ Dandridge Bassett, dated August 28, 1776, shows us a window into life on the home front, as she reports on the massive troop movements through Philadelphia toward New York.

In addition, the installation features a life mask of George Washington. In 1785, the French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) visited Washington at his Mount Vernon residence. To make a mold of the future first president’s visage, Houdon had Washington lie down and then applied a protective layer of grease followed by a layer of plaster. Once hardened, the mold was removed, and plaster was poured into it to make this positive cast. Houdon brought this ‘life mask’ with him to France and apparently used it while working on the marble statue of Washington for the Virginia State Capitol.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Microhistories of the Andes

San Antonio Museum of Art, 24 May 2026 — 23 May 2027

Curated by Kristopher Driggers

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Peru, late 18th century, oil on canvas, 45 × 31 cm (San Antonio Museum of Art, 2003.45).

Named one of the must-see shows this spring by The New York Times, the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) presents Microhistories of the Andes, an exhibition that closely examines individual objects to draw out larger stories about their culture of origin. Curated by Kristopher Driggers, Curator of Latin American Art, Microhistories of the Andes will be on view in the Golden Gallery from 24 May 2026 to 23 May 2027. The exhibition explores Andean cosmologies, cultural conceptions of agricultural practices, objects of devotion and spirituality, and the histories of materials across land and time.

Microhistories of the Andes highlights textiles, ceramic sculptures, paintings, metalwork, and feather arts from the Andean region, including recent acquisitions, such as a gift from Hank Lee in memory of Margie M. Shackelford, and gifts from prominent collectors such as Lindsay and Lucy Duff.

“Microhistories of the Andes poses a question to our visitors: How do singular objects become the starting point for telling broader stories about the past?” Driggers said. “At art museums, we are used to thinking of artworks as exemplifying broader narratives. With its framing, this exhibition brings our attention to the way we move from objects to the larger human stories behind them, with SAMA’s collection as the starting point—including recent gifts to the collection and works that have not been seen in many years.”

Featuring ancient objects from as early as the first millennium AD to more recent objects from the twentieth century, this exhibition examines the cultural context in which they were created. Additionally, highlighting objects from different countries across the Andean region provides a comprehensive look at the region’s diverse history and landscapes, including mountainous, desert, and tropical areas.