This preview show for the museum's 75th anniversary, to be celebrated in 1947, presented the art that was popular at the time of its founding. It opened with a gala reception on April 2 with General and Mrs. Eisenhower as guests of honor. It was hung in the style of the period with paintings arranged at many levels on the walls. The appreciation of Victorian art was at its nadir among the cognoscenti in mid-century. Some critics were aghast to see museum goers nodding in approval at the "horrors" on display. Some of these works and artists are more appreciated by critics and art historians today than in 1946 when the academic style had only been overthrown a few decades earlier. The museum also hosted a special show on Egyptian antiquities.
Knoedler Galleries, the preeminent art gallery in the city, was hosting a centenary celebration where many of the same Victorian artists were featured in the front galleries. Many of the works on display were lent by the Metropolitan Museum, which had quite a collection of the art of the era, much of it donations from patrons. Crowds lined up behind velvet ropes for admission at Knoedler. Times critic Edward Alden Jewell noted the admiring sighs from the visitors to these "appalling" displays "of the taste of our forebears."
The museum had boom years during the 1920s, a glorious decade for the city, when its attendance was second only to the Louvre. The Fifth Avenue facade and entry were completed in 1926. But it suffered from falling attendance and membership and a cutback in funding during the Depression while its operating expenses had risen. The galleries were inadequately heated, ventilated, lit and maintained. It had acquired a reputation within the art world for stodginess, having been slow to accept even the French Impressionists. The Museum of Modern Art was challenging its preeminence. During the first years of the war many of its greatest treasures were secreted away out of fear of Nazi attack or sabotage.
In 1946 the museum was struggling to come to terms with the art movements that had arisen since its creation, working with both the Whitney and Museum of Modern Art in a not altogether successful partnership. It was planning a big anniversary show for 1947 and had launched an ambitious fund-raising drive for much needed renovations and expansion. The drive produced only a fraction of its goal. However, like much of the city, the institution broke out of its doldrums to reach new heights in popularity and reputation in the 1950s.