The focus of our decorative arts collection is a group of twenty-three American period rooms ranging in date from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century. Interspersed with the period rooms are galleries that display an outstanding collection of American and European decorative arts.

The installation 19th-Century Modern explores the development of a taste for abstract design that grew out of industrialization and innovation in the nineteenth century; twentieth-century modernist designs are juxtaposed with their nineteenth-century, proto-modern progenitors.

Additional objects from the decorative arts collection are on display on the fifth floor in our American Art galleries and Visible Storage ▪ Study Center.