NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents Cottage Industry: The Val-Kill Furniture Shop, on view through May 9, 2027. Timed to the centennial anniversary of Val-Kill Industries, the exhibition offers a focused exploration of a trailblazing furniture workshop, founded in 1926, by Eleanor Roosevelt and fellow activists at their rural Hyde Park, New York, retreat. Bringing together over 40 works from The Met collection and key loans from the Val-Kill Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site (National Park Service) and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the presentation reveals how the workshop founders and artisans looked to historical collections at The Met for inspiration while developing a progressive craft community that would serve as a model for the Roosevelts’ later New Deal WPA programs.

“Cottage Industry: The Val-Kill Furniture Shop offers a compelling perspective on how works of art in The Met collection have inspired new forms of creativity and collaboration over the years,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By foregrounding the individuals behind this remarkable workshop—many of whom have been historically overlooked—the exhibition expands our understanding of American design and underscores the Museum’s ongoing commitment to presenting art within broader, more inclusive narrative frameworks.”

"The Val-Kill makers came to The Met to study colonial furniture, but what they produced was never simply a copy," said Alyce Perry Englund, Curator of American Decorative Arts and the exhibition’s curator. "The founders and their colleagues brought their own training and judgment to each piece, adapting historical forms for a new century and a new kind of community. Seeing their work alongside the objects that inspired it lets us recognize these makers as artists in their own right and shows how a museum collection can become a living resource for the people who study it."

Established by Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, and Caroline O’Day, Val-Kill was conceived as both a creative and social enterprise to stimulate meaningful industry that would restore integrity and culture to the local community. The workshop brought artisans from diverse backgrounds, including immigrants trained in European woodworking traditions and rural youth from the Hyde Park area. Nancy Cook, a LGBTQ designer and craftsperson, directed the workshop in a time when female leadership in industries was rare and highly criticized. Cook’s designs were informed by the Arts and Crafts Movement as well as close study of 17th- and 18th-century furniture at institutions such as The Met and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Until 1936, Val-Kill Industries produced furniture, later branching into pewter and textile arts, as FDR ascended from governor of New York (1929–32) to the U.S. presidency (1933–45). Val-Kill became a showcase for the Roosevelts’ progressive reforms and would be leveraged as a model for trade programs initiated by New Deal reforms during the Great Depression.

This timely exhibition highlights a dialogue between past and present through carefully considered pairings of colonial-era furniture from The Met with Val-Kill models and design materials. These juxtapositions illuminate how historical forms were adapted and reinterpreted by leading immigrant craftsmen such as Frank Landolfa and Otto Berge, revealing both technical ingenuity and individual artistic agency. Process materials borrowed from the collections of the National Park Service—including annotated sketches and woodworking templates—enrich appreciation for the makers’ approaches, offering insight into the workshop’s dynamic personalities. The exhibition reflects on the impact of the American Wing’s early installations in the 1920s and addresses Val-Kill’s legacy in the 1930s through Eleanor Roosevelt’s advocacy of regional craft communities during the New Deal era, revealed by artworks such as a slat-back Appalachian style chair from Arthurdale, West Virginia, and a Southwestern Ndé basket. Overall, the exhibition brings renewed attention to the contributions of women, LGBTQ individuals, and immigrant makers whose roles in shaping early American design have often gone unrecognized.