New exhibition asks who gets to decide what counts as a masterpiece

Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library's new exhibition, Challenging Masterpieces: Art and Identity in American Furniture, uses more than 70 objects from its own collection to show how the term masterpiece was constructed, who it left out, and how it's being redefined today. Developed by Joshua W. Lane, the Lois F. and Henry S. McNeil Curator of Furniture, the exhibition opens Sept. 26, 2026, and runs through May 2, 2027. Organized around a single question, What makes a masterpiece? the exhibition traces how that label emerged among early 20th-century collectors, hardened into orthodoxy, and is now being reconsidered. The show unfolds across two galleries and two themes: the first traces how the idea of the aesthetic “masterpiece” took hold in American antiques collecting in the early 20th century; the second carries that inquiry forward, showing how the definition has expanded from the 1970s to the present. “We chose the exhibition title to spur reflection on masterpiece a