A skillful and fascinating retelling of the often testy relationship between J. P. Morgan and Roger Fry, two men who did more to establish the preeminence of the Metropolitan Museum of Art than any collector and curator before or since. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art began an ambitious program of collection building and physical expansion that transformed it into one of the world's foremost museums, an eminence that it has maintained ever since. Two men of singular qualities and accomplishments played key roles in the Met's transformation-J. P. Morgan, America's leading financier and a prominent art collector, and Roger Fry, the headstrong English expert in art history who served as the Met's curator of painting. Their complicated, often contentious relationship embodies and illuminates the myriad tensions between commerce and art, philanthropists and professional staff, that a great museum must negotiate to define and fulfill its mission. In this masterful, multidisciplinary narrative, Charles Molesworth offers the first in-depth look at how Morgan and Fry helped to mold the cultural legacy of masterpieces of painting and the development of the "encyclopedic" museum. Structuring the book as a joint biography, Molesworth describes how Morgan used his vast wealth to bring European art to an American citizenry, while Fry brought high standards of art history from the world of connoisseurs to a general public. Their clashes over the purpose and functions of the Met, which ultimately led to Fry's ouster, reveal the forces-personal and societal-that helped to shape the Metropolitan Museum and other major American cultural institutions during the twentieth century.

This book features a comprehensive collection of essays by Alain Locke (1885-1954), the most formidable African American public intellectual of his generation. It is by far the largest collection of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. The range of the work covers an impressively broad field of subjects: philosophy, literary criticism, art and music criticism, value theory, race, politics, and multiculturalism. His inquisitive mind, his refined taste and his pragmatic temperament brought him renown as the "godfather" of the Harlem Renaissance. But his contributions to many fields extended well beyond that remarkable period, to the very beginning of the civil rights movement. Locke's standing among today's readers will be secured through this presentation of his skillful writing and impressive thought. By virtue of his learning and his commitment to intellectual excellence, Locke can now be seen in the sweep of American culture. Here he can take his rightful place, as the leading African American thinker between W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. Here, Charles Molesworth gathers Locke's writings to showcase his achievements as a whole, both as a civil rights pioneer and as a writer of significant gifts. With a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection provides a definitive resource on the works of a towering figure in African American thought.