The undisputable stars at any museum exhibition are what’s hanging on the walls or displayed behind glass.
Who chose each piece for display is pretty much invisible to the average museumgoer’s eye.
Rye resident Perrin Stein happens to be one of those working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring art and artists to the public. As a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for almost 30 years, she oversees the Met’s soaring collection of French drawings, prints, and illustrated books before 1800.
“Like all curators, the mission centers around the collection and bringing the stories and narratives of it to a broader public,” Stein said.
Before Stein embarked on her decades-long career at The Met, she was an assistant curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She holds a BA from Amherst College and a PhD from The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
While there are about 1.5 million pieces in the collection she now oversees, just a small number can be on view at any given time because of space constraints and light sensitivity.
Thanks to Stein, visitors to The Met will get a rare look at Parisian life in a way they most likely never have before.
“Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin,” her most recent curation, runs now through Feb. 4, 2025. It showcases the artistry of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780), a prolific and unconventional draftsman, whose work invites viewers into the bustling streets, shops, and public life of 18th century Paris.
The exhibition coincides with the 300th anniversary of Saint-Aubin’s birth and a proposed gift to the museum of 22 of his drawings
“People feel like they’re familiar with what Paris in earlier times looked like,” Stein said. “Much of that comes from the Impressionist artists in the second half of the 19th century, like Monet, Renoir, Manet, where you see the insides of bars, performances, and we really get a sense of being there.”
That intimate glimpse of Parisian life, however, would not have existed if it weren’t for Saint-Aubin, Stein said. Instead of painting portraits and altarpieces, he captured life in a city he loved. He roamed the streets of Paris, sketchbook in hand, chronicling the momentous to the ordinary, including social interactions and public goings-on in a style both realistic and whimsical.
“It’s easy to see his images of individual people enjoying their lives, in the full range of their emotions, animating the city,” Stein said. “Saint-Aubin depicted it all with a lot of humor, a lot of sympathy, a lot of empathy.”
One such piece in the exhibition is an engraving Saint-Aubin was commissioned to make by an ironmonger named Périer. At that time, much like today’s business cards, merchants handed out “trade cards” featuring a shop’s address and the wares they had for sale.
Saint-Aubin designed the card with unique vision. “He showed the front of this shop on this cobblestone street, as if the whole facade was removed, and you could see into the dim interior things like fireplace grates, light fixtures, watering cans, all kinds of things made out of metal,” Stein said.
The artist draws the viewer’s eye to a vignette at the left. Clustered there, a customer converses with a saleswoman as they look at an object together. Their expressive faces entice the viewer to imagine what they’re talking about.
The finishing flourish of Saint-Aubin’s perspective is at the top of the scene, in the form of a drapery. Stein points out that the name of the shop and what was for sale would have been inscribed there.
One of the most striking works in the show, Stein said, is a drawing entitled, “The Hôtel-Dieu in Flames.” The Hôtel-Dieu was a hospital built in medieval times on the Île de la Cité in the shadow of Notre-Dame cathedral. One night in 1772, it burned to the ground.
Saint-Aubin lived just across the Seine from the hospital. In highly pigmented gouache he captured the church as flames devoured it.
“He painted in very vivid colors that made the flames very visceral, and the scene very real,” said Stein. “Several people died. Others were saved. And it was an event that no doubt he, as a lover of the city, was very affected by.”
Stein said that surely everybody at the time would have come out of their houses to witness the fire. She was particularly struck by the image, as it reminded her of another fateful Paris fire.
“Seeing the drawing made me shiver, because it brought back memories of when we also, on TV, saw Notre Dame in flames, an important landmark right near there,” she said. “I can still remember the people who lived in Paris, all the photos of them standing on the banks of the Seine, looking up in shock and horror, with ashes falling around them.”
Stein sees museums as places for exploration and discovery. “I think the best visits to museums are finite and targeted, and not to the point where you get fatigued and bleary eyed,” she said.
To that end, the Saint-Aubin works grace the walls of the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr., Gallery, a well-traveled space that leads to the Impressionist paintings. While it’s safe to say that most of The Met’s more than six million yearly visitors have never heard of Saint-Aubin, Stein is thrilled to give them an opportunity to stumble upon his work.
“There are some people who seek it out, but I see people all the time, just getting pulled over, reading the labels, looking at the drawings,” said Stein. “So many of these people must be discovering the artist for the first time.”
For that, Stein couldn’t be happier.