Old wine into new skins
THEY used to be called the English galleries. Now, after a closure of four years and a $22 million refit, they have been reimagined as the British galleries.
This is not the only shift in the display and interpretation of the Metropolitan Museum’s splendid collection of decorative art from this country (largely, it has to be said, English).
The principle remains the same, however: a narrative walk-through, celebrating the quiddity of British furniture, ceramics, glass, silver, textiles and , from 1600 to 1900. This is serious stuff, object-focused and without a hint of dumbing down. We should be flattered by the undertaking. France is the only other foreign country whose decorative arts are so honoured; there are no Spanish galleries, for example. When one hears that a reason for the redisplay of the British collection is that the previous presentation, dating only from 1995 ( COUNTRY LIFE , ), was not well visited, one is doubly grateful for the Met’s courage in doing it. Brown furniture is out of fashion. Time to realise not all Georgian furniture
