The Met Marks Val-Kill Industries Centennial with Furniture Shop Exhibition

Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and running through May 9, 2027, "Cottage Industry: The Val-Kill Furniture Shop" commemorates the centennial of Val-Kill Industries. The furniture workshop was established in 1926 by Eleanor Roosevelt alongside fellow activists at their rural retreat in Hyde Park, New York. More than 40 works drawn from The Met's own collection, supplemented by significant loans from the Val-Kill Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site under the National Park Service and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, form the core of the presentation. The exhibition demonstrates how the workshop's founders and artisans turned to historical collections at The Met for design inspiration, even as they built a progressive craft community. That community, in turn, became a template for the Roosevelts' later New Deal WPA programs. A quoted statement describes the show as offering a compelling perspective on the workshop's legacy. The exhibition is timed to the centennial anniversary of Val-Kill Industries.