These various painted scenes and images on a wooden palette are by Joseph Keppler, Sr. and unidentified friends.

Hauser represents the contiuation of European artists arriving in NYC. This canvas also records the development of land along the west side of Central Park as it became a highly desireable residential area.

New York City was and still is a magnet for young people drawn to making a name for themselves in the arts. Although Hopkins' portrait of his wife shows her in her successful role, the reality of her subsequent career serves as an example of how even people of talent can founder in the City.

Mary Beth McKenzie's self-portrait suggests a complex mixture of personal strengths, frailties, and emotions. Her self-portraits, as well as her portrayals of friends and relatives in figural works, are intended not as accurate renderings, but rather as psychological probes into individuals searching for inner understanding. By including the view of New York City seen from her studio window in the self-portrait shown here, McKenzie alludes to another aspect of her career -- canvases focused on older areas of New York City. In those paintings she draws the viewer's eye to details of architecture and the effect of light on old brick and old, often deserted streets. As a teacher at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design, McKenzie often assigns self-portraits to her students, encouraging them to experience looking, artistically and psychologically, into one-self.

In addition to recording the long-ago $1 subway fare, this painting serves as a portrait of one of New York City's army of service workers, often unnoticed and unrecorded, who have been gradually being replaced by Metrocard machines. The man's stolid expression may be read as either boredom or resignation, another feature of repetitive, unacknowledged work.

On June 1, 1813, the United States frigate Chesapeake, 36 guns, Captain James Lawrence, accepted a challenge to combat from the British frigate, Shannon, 38 guns, Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, and sailed from Boston harbor to meet her adversary awaiting her off the Massachusetts coast. After an engagement of only fifteen minutes, the Chesapeake was boarded and captured and was taken as a prize to Halifax. The name of the artist is cited from an old label pasted on the reverse.

The terse construction instructions and arrows indicating where work should be done evoke the 1990s and early 2000s when the New York City subway stations were undergoing extensive renovation, often including art work. The stickers and graffiti comments, on the other hand, reflect current events of interest or concern to subway users.

This painting documents the South Bronx as it was being transformed from the burnt-out area of the 1970s to a burgeoning antique and second hand furniture trading neighborhood. It is one of the non-Manhattan neighborhoods where the "El" still runs.

Stephen Csoka was born in Hungary, where he trained at the Royal Academy in Budapest and enjoyed a successful career as an artist before immigrating to the U.S. in 1934. Upon arriving in this country, Csoka worked as a house painter in order to support his family, but found time to create painted observations of his new Brooklyn neighborhood and of some places he visited in New York. Eventually he produced enough work to successfully exhibit at local galleries and went on to become a member of the National Academy, the Society of American Graphic Artists, the Audubon Artists Associate and the Pastel Society of America.

"Sunday at the Whitney" depicts a diverse group of visitors enjoying the paintings at the Whitney Museum, which in 1944 was located at 10 West 8th Street.

Reflects Kensett's distinctive mature style featuring reflective expanses of water along the northeastern seaboard set against a brilliant and seemingly limitless sky. The radiant light, and calm stillness of the water exudes divine presence and an enveloping mood of reverie, offering a contemplative and spiritually imbued interpretation of American scenery akin to that described by the American Transcendentalist writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.