Headdress
Unknown Artist
early 19th century
Medium
glass, metal, cotton, mother-of-pearl
Classification
Headdress
Culture
Russian
Department
Costume Institute
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Edward S. Harkness in memory of her mother, Elizabeth Greenman Stillman, 1931
Accession Number
2009.300.1105
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
William Sidney Mount's 1847 oil on canvas painting *The Power of Music* offers a thoughtful look at everyday rural life on Long Island in the years before the War. An African American laborer stands outside a barn, listening closely to a fiddle tune being played and enjoyed by white men gathered inside. The scene suggests music's ability to create a shared human connection, yet the figures remain physically divided—one group inside, the other outside, separated by the barn door. This arrangement serves as a quiet but powerful symbol of the racial and social separations that defined America at the time. Created by the American artist William Sidney Mount (1807–1868), the work uses the oil-on-canvas medium to present these tensions with clarity and warmth, inviting viewers to consider both the unifying potential of music and the divisions of its era.