New-York Historical Society - Collections

Collections

The New-York Historical Society’s museum is the oldest in New York City and predates the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by nearly 70 years. Its art holdings comprise more than 1.6 million works. Among them are a world-class collection of Hudson River School paintings, including major works by Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church; iconic genre and history paintings including works by William Sidney Mount and Eastman Johnson; a vast range of American portraits, including paintings by Rembrandt Peale and Gilbert Stuart; all 435 of John James Audubon’s extant preparatory watercolors for Birds of America; and an encyclopedic collection of more than 800 works documenting the full range of representational sculpture in America from the colonial period to the present day. The Historical Society also holds an important collection of paintings and drawings by marine artist James Bard. The museum holds much of sculptor Elie Nadelman’s legendary American folk art collection, including furniture and household accessories such as lamps, candlesticks, textiles, glass, and ceramic objects, as well as paintings, toys, weathervanes, sculptural woodcarvings, and chalkware. The Historical Society’s holdings in artifacts and decorative arts include George Washington’s camp bed from Valley Forge, the desk at which Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” one of the world’s largest collections of Tiffany lamps and glasswork, and a collection of more than 550 late nineteenth-century American board games.

Its research library contains more than three million books, pamphlets, maps, atlases, newspapers, broadsides, music sheets, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. Among its collections are far-ranging materials relating to the founding and early history of the nation; one of the best collections of 18th-century newspapers in the United States; an outstanding collection of materials documenting slavery and Reconstruction; an exceptional collection of Civil War material, including Ulysses S. Grant’s terms of surrender for Robert E. Lee; collections relating to trials in the United States prior to 1860; American fiction, poetry, and belles-lettres prior to 1850; a broad range of materials relating to the history of the circus; and American travel accounts from the colonial era to the present day.