Toward Joy Goes Off Rails at Brooklyn Museum

I love visiting the Brooklyn Museum. It always seems like adventure travel, though the No. 2 or No. 3 train from Penn Station takes the intrepid to nearly its front door in 30 minutes. Its grand museum, a splendor-in-the-rough, is 200 years old this year, more or less, since the Brooklyn Museum has had multiple incarnations and it started in 1825 as a library. That said, an anniversary is when a museum says it’s having an anniversary. By all means, get yourself there. It’s among the crowning glories of American culture.

I would recommend a visit to Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, the museum’s new presentation of its distinguished American-art collection along with, here and there, Latin American and South American art. It displays around 400 works of art, including stars such as Louis Rémy Mignot’s Niagara and Bierstadt’s Storm in the Rocky Mountains, both blockbusters from 1866; Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom, from 1833; John Biggers’s Web of Life, from 1958; favorites by Hassam, Prendergast, Twachtman, and Ernest Lawson; Herter Brothers furniture; and two great painting by Eakins. The quality’s there.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I love visiting the Brooklyn Museum. It always seems like adventure travel, though the No. 2 or No. 3 train from Penn Station takes the intrepid to nearly its front door in 30 minutes. Its grand museum, a splendor-in-the-rough, is 200 years old this year, more or less, since the Brooklyn Museum has had multiple incarnations and it started in 1825 as a library. That said, an anniversary is when a museum says it’s having an anniversary. By all means, get yourself there. It’s among the crowning glories of American culture.

I would recommend a visit to Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, the museum’s new presentation of its distinguished American-art collection along with, here and there, Latin American and South American art. It displays around 400 works of art, including stars such as Louis Rémy Mignot’s Niagara and Bierstadt’s Storm in the Rocky Mountains, both blockbusters from 1866; Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom, from 1833; John Biggers’s Web of Life, from 1958; favorites by Hassam, Prendergast, Twachtman, and Ernest Lawson; Herter Brothers furniture; and two great painting by Eakins. The quality’s there.