inquiry began in the stores for more beautiful wares. This new demand was supplied, and the supply increased the demand, until to-day it is safe to affirm that nowhere in England, France, or Germany can be found on sale such collections of magnificent ceramic art as are exposed in Broadway stores. This demand has stimulated American manufacturers, and the pottery interests are advancing with such rapid strides that no one need doubt their success. In a few years thousands of families, men, women, and children, will be employed in an industry which was unknown in America six years ago-the making of beautiful pottery and porcelain. The stimulus thus visibly giv | country already a thousandfold more than the amount they have expended. Every department of industrial and decorative art production feels the benefit. New York could well afford to expend millions for such a permanent increase of its advantages and such benefits to its property value. In 1876 General Di Cesnola had completed his labors in Cyprus, and the trustees were compelled to consider the question whether they could purchase the results. They appealed to the membership of the Museum and the public for assistance, and the second collection from Cyprus was purchased by telegraph from General Di Cesnola, then in London. intent of the building to their use. It was liable at any time to be appropriated to another institution. Those were days of magnificent views on the part of New York politicians. There is no reason to doubt that some of them regarded this appropriation of five hundred thousand dollars as only the beginning of appropriations to be expended on a gorgeous art building. Not so the trustees of the Museum of Art. They resolved at the start, unanimously and finally, that if they should be consulted in regard to the building, they would neither There was no room in Fourteenth Street | approve nor have anything to do with any for the addition of this collection to the plan which should require another approfirst. The larger portion of it was, there- priation for its completion. They have fore, stored in its original boxes to await so strenuously and firmly adhered to this the present state of affairs. The golden resolution that they have compelled a wontreasures of Kurium were, however, placed der in the history of public buildings-the in a room devoted to them, and were de- entire completion of a museum structure, scribed in this Magazine when first ex- capable of extension as may be needed posed to the eyes of the modern world, hereafter, at a cost within the amount of after twenty-five hundred years of repose the first and only appropriation. in the temple vaults. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had been incorporated in 1870. In 1871 the Legislature authorized the Commissioners of the Department of Parks in New York to erect two buildings on any public park in the city, one for the American Museum of Natural History, and the other for a "museum and gallery of art by the Metropolitan Museum of Art," or other institutions of a like character, at a cost which should not exceed for each building such sum of money as could be borrowed at an interest of thirty-five thousand dollars a year. The sum of money was obviously at that time five hundred thousand dollars. The trustees of the Museum of Art were not authorized to have any control of the plans of the building, and the act did not even confine the In the spring of 1879 the building was finished, with the exception of the basement room, and in March the removal from Fourteenth Street was commenced. Up to this time, from the organization of the Museum, the daily superintendence, and a large part of the actual handling of articles, had been done by trustees in person. The several sub-committees of the Executive Committee, having different departments of work in charge, gave personal attention to their duties, and the Executive Committee, meeting every two weeks, received their reports. It has already been stated that the trustees have contributed a large proportion of the funds used by the Museum in purchasing works of art. It is proper to place on record the fact that they have also given their daily labor and attendance during thousand fragile objects. There has been no year when the trustees | plished without injury to any of the many have not been obliged to give more or less money to pay current expenses. General But although the new Museum of Art Di Cesnola, having become a trustee and had walls and a roof, it had nothing else. secretary of the Museum, has for two There was no furniture. The Legislature years devoted most of his time, without in 1879 authorized the expenditure by the compensation, to its work, and when the Park Department, with the approval of the removal was effected, he and other trust-trustees of the Museum, of thirty thouees took charge of the labor, lifting each sand dollars in 1879 and thirty thousand in 1880 for equipping the building and establishing the collections of the Museum in it. Since the removal in the spring of 1879 the work of furnishing and arranging has gone steadily forward. Had the entire appropriation of sixty thousand dollars been available in the first year, the Museum would long since have been open to the public. But it was impossible to complete the work, or even to order the necessary cases and furniture, until the second appropriation was made certain by the Board of Apportionment. While the Museum was in Fourteenth Street it was comparatively easy for trustees to give it their personal attention, but when it was removed to Eighty-second Street this was no longer practicable. The appointment of a director has long been regarded by friends of the Museum as necessary to the well-being of the institution in the future, and the subject was now forced on the attention of the trustees. General Cesnola was appointed to this position in May, 1879, and for the past year has had perhaps the heaviest labor ever imposed on the director of an art museum. This was not alone the labor of furnishing a new building with cases, superintending carpenters and joiners, marble-workers, and glass and gas fitters. While doing this he has completed the more congenial but not less laborious work of condensing the second Cypriote collection with the first, so that the two now form a complete collection. The director has also arranged other departments of the Museum's possessions, and has pressed forward the work of catalogue-making, which is a much greater |