Rich Man, Poor Man: Art, Class, and Commerce in a Late Medieval Town

What we now call the middle class was, in 16th-century England, known as the “middling sort.” The people who fell under that category were not nobles but maintained an interest in art and architecture on par with upper-class society. This exhibit explores the development of middle-class taste through textiles, prints, decorative arts and a set of large-scale domestic sculptures, commissioned by merchant Henry Hamlyn, that forms the centerpiece of this exhibit.