Description: The New-York Historical Society holds one of the nation's premiere collections of eighteenth-century American portraits, works that art historian James Thomas Flexner called "the first flowers of our wilderness." This installation provides twenty-first century viewers with ways of understanding these remarkably innovative and engaging paintings, some of the earliest works of American art. The exhibition focuses on 26 eighteenth-century portraits that mark the beginnings of New York's primacy as a cultural center. It also includes a sampling of related objects from other N-YHS collections. It also speaks to the ways that these works have changed over time as a result of aging materials and conservation treatments.