An American Vision: Henry Francis du Pont’s Winterthur Museum

Winterthur was originally the country estate of Henry Francis du Pont (yes, those Du Ponts), a collector whose taste and connoisseurship for American antiques were so exquisite that Jackie Kennedy prevailed upon him to help re-do the White House. Having amassed a collection of 85,000-plus objects—furniture, glass and metalwork, ceramics, and textiles—the man simply had no rival. Some three hundred plums from Winterthur, founded as a museum in 1951, make up its first-ever traveling exhibition. Among them are priceless Chippendale pieces, a tea table exemplifying the eighteenth-century Chinoiserie craze, and several Frakturs: a distinctly American (actually, Pennsylvania German) take on the illuminated manuscript. 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org