The collection of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. More than one thousand paintings, six hundred sculptures, and 2,600 drawings - exceeding four thousand works in total by approximately nine hundred different artists- constitute an encyclopedic survey of fine art in America, from the late colonial period in the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. The collection has been assembled over more than a century, beginning almost immediately after the Museum's founding. (American paintings, sculpture, and drawings by artists born after 1878 are in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, and all photographs in the Department of Photographs.)