“Fabergé from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This event has ended.

Louisiana heiress and philanthropist Matilda Geddings Gray (1885–1971) acquired her first object by Fabergé in 1933. An artist herself, with a refined aesthetic sensibility, she was a sophisticated collector, while the name of the Russian artist-jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé (1846–1920) was almost unknown in the United States. Over the following years, Matilda Geddings Gray amassed one of the finest Fabergé collections in the world, and Fabergé’s art has become widely known and internationally sought after.

A selection of works by Fabergé from Matilda Geddings Gray’s sumptuous collection is on long-term loan at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and comprises this exhibition. Objects originally commissioned by and created for the Romanov family, such as the Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket—the most important Fabergé work in a U. S. collection—and three magnificent Imperial Easter Eggs, are on view. The exhibition will display works from the collection on a rotating schedule for five years. Iconic works from the House of Fabergé have not been on public view in New York since 2004.