The Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) curators Kisluk-Grosheide and Munger present a thorough reworking of their 1979 guide to the Wrightsman galleries. Dealing with the most outstanding grouping of 17th- and 18th-century French decorative arts outside of France, the book in hand eschews the room-by-room order of its predecessor and is instead organized by medium—wood paneling and furniture, bronze and mounted porcelain, chimney pieces, textiles and leather, porcelain, silver, and gold boxes. This arrangement shows stylistic developments within media and forms. An opening essay describes the history of French period room display at the Met and makes clear that these installations are evocative collections of objects in reconstructed paneled rooms, assembled one by one from many sources, not an actual historical collection.