Henry Varnum Poor Artist’s Son and Town in Dispute Over Works in Former Residence

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The works date from 1876 to 1956 and range from a couple of inches to a couple of feet high. Included are examples from all major American potters, including George E. Ohr (the self-styled Mad Potter of Biloxi) and William H. Grueby, and from such 20th-century artists as Henry Varnum Poor, Hunt Diederich, and Peter Voulkos.

Ellison, who moved to New York in the 1960s to become a painter, spent decades collecting the objects in thrift shops, flea markets, and antiques stores, initially just for pleasure.

As a condition of the gift, worth an estimated $15-20 million, Ellison asked the museum to show the collection on its own and to prepare a book about it, both of which conditions the Met met. The collection will be unveiled on a new mezzanine in the museum's American Wing on May 19, when a second phase of renovation of the wing is completed.

The gift is an especially welcome addition to the Met, whose collection of American art pottery had been "spotty," according to the Times.  “It was adequate,” said Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the museum’s curator of American decorative arts. “But this collection transforms it. Now it will be extraordinary.”