Right now in the Metropolitan’s Print and Drawing Room, just to the left at the top of the Grand Staircase, the best selection EVER.

At the center of the room, on the western wall, is an installation of six drypoints by Peggy Bacon dating from 1919 to 1927 and including both her large-figure, pushed to-the-front characters, as in the hard-working women in Help, 1927, and her amazingly complex crowd scenes such as Café de la Rotonde, 1921, in which she had to put the word ‘Cafe’ onto the plate backwards so it would read properly when the door is open and ‘Cafe de la Rotonde’ onto the plate in the normal left-to-right direction so that it would read backwards as we see the words from the inside of the room. Phew!

Bacon was a wonderful printer and all the Met’s impressions are beautiful.

But they didn’t leave it there. In the interest of gilding the lily they took this opportunity to recognize the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonard da Vinci on May 2. The most northern half of the room is given to an ‘In Focus’ presentation with four, FOUR drawings by Leonardo. These are actually on the east wall nearly opposite the Bacons. It goes without saying that they are worth a trip in themselves. Additionally there is a print by Giovanni Pietro da Birago -- the earliest surviving copy after Leonardo’s Last Supper. There are also works after Learndo by Albrecht Durer, Wenceslaus Hollar, and my favorite, Martin Schongauer’s Griffin.

It’s not clear to me how long this installation will last, maybe until the end of March, but go NOW!