The exhibition is the first comprehensive exhibition to examine the vast range of American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts throughout the nineteenth century. Concentrating on America's most ambitious work from the federal style of the late eighteenth century to the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright in the twentieth, the exhibition aims at clarifying the complex and overlapping succession of tastes and ideas throughout the nineteenth century. At the beginning of this century, American art and design were basically a provincial, if vital, reflection of European fashions. By the end of the century, however, native styles had evolved, and Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany and others were influencing ideas and styles abroad.