A pervasive cultural movement glorifying the nation's colonial heritage, the Colonial Revival has influenced art, architecture and the decorative arts, and impacted our understanding of history. Beginning with the movement's roots in the 1840s and continuing through the present, the exhibition looks at the Colonial Revival in the context of Long Island and features paintings, prints, textiles, furniture and other artifacts from such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and Winterthur Museum, as well as from the collection of The Long Island Museum.
All societies selectively glorify certain aspects of their past while neglecting others.
A fluid and persistent stream in United States history, the Colonial Revival has helped people cope with the massive changes of modernization by providing a comforting sense of tradition. Some companies directly encouraged this trend by marketing Colonial Revival pattern reproductions. The phenomenon of antique collecting gained momentum in the early 20th century as the nation's wealthy pursued early American decorative arts. Bertha Benkard of Oyster Bay, Emily de Forest of Cold Spring Harbor, and Henry Francis du Pont, whose Chestertown House in Southampton was a laboratory for ideas that would later come to fruition at his Winterthur Museum in Delaware. Works depicting important Long Island historic sites, such as Edward Lamson Henry's Old Hook Mill, East Hampton and Childe Hassam's Guild Hall and Old Mulford House, illustrate the growing intrigue with vernacular buildings.