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photography Lee Sandstead

Hall of Fame of Great Americans—America’s first Hall of Fame

Photography Lee Sandstead

Since 1900, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans has honored prominent citizens who have had a significant impact on human advancement. Ninety-eight busts of presidents, statesmen, scientists, inventors, artists and humanitarians stand side by side in the Colonnade, designed by Stanford White, which overlooks a magnificent view stretching from the Harlem River to the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

Those honored include Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the telephone, writers Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, Red Cross founder Clara Barton, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, educator Booker T. Washington and aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Each great American is commemorated with a bronze bust and tablet bearing a summary of his or her accomplishments. Elections to the hall are held every three years by an assembly of 100 distinguished Americans.

Who are the Great Americans, who were the artists that portrayed them--and what does it all say about Americans both past and present?

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stained-Glass Window from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photography Lee Sandstead

The New Art--Stained Glass

The American stained-glass movement of the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries forever revolutionized the art of stained glass. Fueled by the fierce competition between the artists John La Farge and L.C. Tiffany, American artists challenged six-centuries of stained-glass dogma to form their own patented style and radically new subject matter.

In the past year, Mr. Sandstead has personally experienced thousands of American stained-glass windows from this era and seen first-hand the genius of the American Stained-Glass movement. Come to this tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to not only see some American masterpieces, but also to learn how stained-glass and the art of stained-glass can dramatically affect your life, giving you another life-long passion to pursue.

John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1883-84

Photography Lee Sandstead

Defining the Self: Portraiture

Portraiture is often ignored or misunderstood to those new to art appreciation—yet the potential for aesthetic enjoyment of this unique subject matter is nearly unlimited.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers some of the world’s greatest portraits from all major eras: Roman, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism, and the Academic art of the late Nineteenth century.

What are the major masterpieces and how can one integrate them into one’s life?

Of added benefit will be the significant discussion and understanding of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

Woodlawn Cemetery, circa 1920. (About 1/12 of the cemetery.)

Woodlawn Cemetery

“5th Avenue of the Dead.”

Woodlawn cemetery is one of the most important cemeteries in the world--known for its lush landscape design, 1,300 mausoleums, and dozens of important artworks. Not to mention that some of America's greatest 19th-century citizens are buried there.

Attend this two-hour tour through some of the most touching monuments that the world has ever seen.

Daniel Chester French, Memory, 1919

Photography Lee Sandstead

American Sculpture at the Met

The Americans at the end of the nineteenth century created more representational artworks than any other culture in history.

Their most innovative specialty? Sculpture.

Whether public monuments to Civil War Heroes or private memorials to individuals in cemeteries, what the Americans achieved in so few decades is astonishing.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the greatest collections of American sculpture in the world. Come to this two-hour tour to see the beauty, individualism, and patriotism of the American eye.