The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a place where ancient statues meet Impressionist paintings, samurai armor stands alongside Hollywood costumes, and five thousand years of history come together under one roof. Today, its galleries house more than two million objects spanning five millennia of human history. The permanent collection is overseen by seventeen curatorial departments, each with its own staff of curators and researchers, as well as six conservation departments and a scientific research department. Here you can explore American and European painting and sculpture, Asian cultures, the art of Africa and Egypt, as well as books, musical instruments, and photography.
Interesting Facts About The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met)
- The museum’s current building on Fifth Avenue stretches for almost 400 meters and covers more than 190,000 square meters, making it more than twenty times larger than the 1880 building.
- The museum first opened on February 20, 1872, on Fifth Avenue. The foundation of its first exhibition was the personal collection of railroad magnate Taylor Johnston, consisting of 174 paintings.
- In 1880, the museum moved to a new Gothic Revival building designed by architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould.
- In 1907, The Met acquired its first painting by Auguste Renoir.
- In 1937, the Costume Institute became part of the museum. Because historical garments are extremely fragile, they are displayed to the public only twice a year. In 2007, the starting ticket price for the Met Gala was $6,500.
- In 1964, the Temple of Dendur was saved from being submerged during the construction of the Aswan Dam. In gratitude for the assistance in preserving the monument, Egypt donated it to The Met.
- In 2013, the museum’s collection grew by 33 works by Pablo Picasso.
- Until 2014, admission tickets took the form of colorful badges, with the color changing every day. Tourists happily took them home as souvenirs until the badges were replaced with stickers.
- Today, The Met houses more than two million objects spanning approximately 5,000 years of human history.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection (The Met)
The Met’s collection is organized like an encyclopedia of world art. Below are the main departments and the highlights that make each one worth visiting.
Egyptian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The Egyptian collection contains more than 26,000 objects dating from the Paleolithic period to the Ptolemaic era, and almost all of them are displayed in a 40-gallery wing. The museum acquired more than half of the collection through its own archaeological expeditions, which operated in Egypt from 1906 to 1941.
Among the rarest objects are thirteen wooden models discovered in 1920 in a tomb in South Asasif, on the west bank of ancient Thebes. They depict boats, gardens, workshops, and scenes of everyday life from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, recreated in miniature with remarkable precision. The museum’s unofficial mascot is a small faience hippopotamus known as William the Faience Hippopotamus. The collection also includes the Metternich Stela, the chair of Reniseneb, and a lotus-shaped bowl.
The main highlight is the Temple of Dendur. It was dismantled as part of an international campaign to save the monuments of Nubia when the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge them. In 1965, the temple was given to the United States, and in 1978 it was reassembled in a new wing of the museum. Today, it stands in a vast gallery beside a glass wall overlooking Central Park.
Greek and Roman Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The Department of Greek and Roman Art houses more than 17,000 objects. The first object ever entered into the museum’s inventory was a Roman sarcophagus, which is still on display today. Among the most interesting works are the Etruscan Chariot from Monteleone, the Amathus Sarcophagus, and Cycladic figurines from the middle of the third millennium BC.
Their simple geometric forms look so modern that some resemble abstract sculptures from the twentieth century. Another important highlight is a fully reconstructed bedroom from a villa in Boscoreale, which was buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. In 2007, the exhibition space was expanded to approximately 5,600 square meters, and most of the collection is now on permanent display.
European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The Department of European Paintings houses around 2,600 paintings dating from the thirteenth to the early twentieth century. The collection began with the purchase of 174 paintings from European dealers in 1871, although the museum later sold nearly two-thirds of them.
The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection grew significantly after the museum received the collection of Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer in 1929. It is particularly rich in works by Courbet, Corot, Manet, Monet, and Degas. Another major addition was the collection of Walter and Leonore Annenberg, which was promised to the museum in 1991. It included works by Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Monet, Seurat, and Van Gogh.
The museum also has a particularly strong collection of nineteenth-century French painting. During the 2000s, it acquired and received as gifts more than 200 paintings and studies.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
This is one of the museum’s largest departments, with more than 50,000 objects dating from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century. The collection includes furniture, jewelry, glass, ceramics, tapestries, textiles, clocks, and scientific instruments. Many objects are displayed together with complete historical interiors. Some rooms and even entire courtyards were literally moved to the museum and reconstructed inside its galleries.
Among the most unusual exhibits are a sixteenth-century courtyard from the Spanish castle of Vélez-Blanco, which occupies a two-story gallery, and a studiolo from the ducal palace in Gubbio. In the sculpture collection, look for Bernini’s Bacchanal, a cast of Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, and works by Jean-Antoine Houdon, including his bust of Voltaire and his portrait of Voltaire’s daughter Sabine.
American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The renovated American art galleries opened on January 16, 2012, and cover approximately 2,800 square meters. They trace the history of art in the United States from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. In July 2018, the museum introduced its first permanent exhibition dedicated to the art of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, titled Art of Native America.
Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The Asian art department contains more than 35,000 objects and occupies an entire wing covering approximately 6,000 square meters, spanning 5,000 years of history. The Met devotes more space to Chinese art than any museum outside China. The collection began in 1879 with the purchase of approximately 1,000 ceramic objects. Today, it contains more than 14,000 works, with 80–90 percent of them acquired through donations.
The Astor Court, which opened in 1981, recreates a Ming Dynasty-style garden courtyard modeled on the Garden of the Master of the Nets in Suzhou. It was the first garden of its kind outside China. The Japanese galleries opened in 1987, the galleries of South and Southeast Asian art in 1994, and the Korean art gallery in 1998.
Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The museum holds one of the world’s largest collections of Islamic art, with approximately 12,000 objects from regions stretching from Spain to Central Asia. The collection includes ceramics, textiles, Persian and Mughal Indian miniatures, and calligraphy, ranging from decrees issued by Suleiman the Magnificent to Qur’anic manuscripts from different periods. It also contains the world’s largest collection of miniatures created during the reign of Shah Tahmasp I.
The galleries reopened on November 1, 2011, after a decade-long renovation. They include an entire room from the Nur al-Din House, an early eighteenth-century Damascus residence, which was transported and reconstructed inside the museum.
Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
For a long time, the museum had very little representation of the art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. In 1969, Nelson Rockefeller donated more than 3,000 objects from his collection to The Met. In 1982, a dedicated wing opened in memory of his son, Michael Rockefeller, who died during an expedition to New Guinea.
Today, the wing houses more than 11,000 works and covers approximately 3,700 square meters. In recent years, the wing was closed for a major $70 million renovation. It reopened in May 2025.
Armor at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
One of the museum’s most popular departments houses approximately 14,000 objects. The collection is particularly strong in arms and armor from late medieval Europe, as well as Japanese arms and armor dating from the fifth to the nineteenth century. At the same time, it covers a vast geographic area, from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome to the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The collection also includes American firearms from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Among the best-known objects are the armor of Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, and Emperor Ferdinand I. The famous procession of mounted knights on the ground floor was assembled in 1975. In 2020, Ronald Lauder pledged 91 objects to the museum, marking the largest addition to the European arms and armor collection since 1942.
Musical Instruments at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The collection of approximately 5,000 instruments from every continent is almost unparalleled among major museums. It began in 1889 with a gift of 270 instruments from Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, who later became the department’s first curator. Highlights include several Stradivari violins and the oldest surviving piano, made by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1720. Many of the instruments remain playable, and the department hosts concerts and demonstrations.
Drawings, Photography, and Modern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The Department of Drawings and Prints holds approximately 21,000 drawings and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas. The photography collection contains more than 25,000 prints and grew from a gift by Alfred Stieglitz, later expanded by the collections of the Gilman Paper Company, the Rubell family, and Ford Motor Company, as well as the personal archive of Walker Evans.
Modern art occupies approximately 6,000 square meters and includes around 13,000 works. Highlights include Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, works by Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollock, and 90 works by Paul Klee donated by Heinz Berggruen.
The Robert Lehman Collection and Medieval Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
After banker Robert Lehman died in 1969, his foundation transferred approximately 2,600 works to the museum. The collection had been assembled by Lehman and his father. A separate wing was built for it and opened in 1975, with some of its galleries recreating the interiors of the collector’s mansion.
The Department of Medieval Art contains more than 10,000 objects, divided between the main building and The Cloisters. In the main building, a famous Christmas tree is installed every December in the department’s high-vaulted gallery.
The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Fashion as Art
In 1937, The Met welcomed the Costume Institute into its fold. Originally housed in the museum’s basement, the delicate nature of historical fabrics soon required special preservation conditions. Today, its rare and fragile garments are exhibited only twice a year.
The Costume Institute is also behind one of the most talked-about fashion events in the world — the annual Met Gala. What began as a charity fundraiser has become a global spectacle of fashion, celebrity, and culture.
In 2007, the starting price for a Met Gala ticket was $6,500.
Each gala has a unique theme, often interpreted dramatically by guests. Some memorable past themes include:
- “Rock Style” (1999) – spotlighting over 40 rock icons like Madonna, David Bowie, and The Beatles
- “The Chanel Exhibit” (2005) – a tribute to the legendary fashion house
- “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” (2008) – where comic book aesthetics met high fashion
- “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity” (2010) – exploring how shifts in women’s fashion from the 1890s to the 1940s mirrored political and social change in the U.S.
The Architecture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
The museum building is not the work of a single architect or a single era, but a combination of several periods of American architecture. In 1871, the city allocated the museum a site in Central Park between East Park Drive, Fifth Avenue, and the transverse roads at 79th and 85th Streets.
The first building, made of red brick and stone, was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, the architects responsible for much of the design of Central Park itself. It opened in 1880. The steel structure was engineered by London-based engineers Edward and George Radford. Today, this original building is barely visible because it was gradually surrounded and enclosed by later additions.
The familiar Fifth Avenue facade, the Great Hall, and the grand staircase appeared around the turn of the twentieth century. They were designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Richard Morris Hunt, and after his death, the work was completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt. In 1910, the firm McKim, Mead & White completed the side wings along Fifth Avenue. The glass structures on the sides and rear of the museum, facing the park, were designed by the firm Roche-Dinkeloo in the second half of the twentieth century.
Today, the museum stretches for almost 400 meters and covers more than 190,000 square meters, making it approximately twenty times larger than the original 1880 building. Technically, it is a complex of more than twenty structures, most of which are difficult to distinguish from the outside.
The Met Cloisters
The museum has a second location in northern Manhattan. The Cloisters stands in Fort Tryon Park overlooking the Hudson River, on a site of approximately 1.6 hectares, and is entirely dedicated to medieval Europe. The building, designed by Charles Collens, opened on May 10, 1938. It incorporates authentic architectural elements from five French medieval cloisters, which connect the galleries.
The collection began with the holdings of sculptor George Grey Barnard, purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1925. Rockefeller also acquired the land and donated it to the museum in the early 1930s. Today, The Cloisters houses more than 5,000 works of European art dating from 800 to 1600, including seven tapestries made between 1495 and 1505, the Mérode Altarpiece from the workshop of Robert Campin, stained glass, and sculpture. Three courtyards contain gardens based on medieval models.
The museum admission ticket is valid at both locations, so you can visit the Fifth Avenue building and The Cloisters as part of the same trip.
A Brief History of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met was founded in 1870 by a group of wealthy New York art enthusiasts. The original collection — 174 paintings owned by railroad tycoon Taylor Johnston — formed the core of the museum’s first exhibition. In 1907, The Met acquired its first painting by Auguste Renoir, setting the stage for what would become a world-class Impressionist collection. In 2013, the museum expanded further with an invaluable Cubist collection, including 33 works by Picasso.
The museum first opened its doors on February 20, 1872, at 681 Fifth Avenue. In 1880, it moved to its current home on Fifth Avenue — a neo-Gothic building designed by architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. Since then, the structure has seen numerous expansions and modernizations.
Fun fact: For decades, visitors wore small round, color-coded admission badges, which changed daily and were proudly pinned to clothing as souvenirs. In 2014, these were replaced with less charming sticker tickets.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in Popular Culture
The Met is not only a museum but also a popular filming location. Its galleries, grand staircase, and Temple of Dendur regularly appear as settings in films, television series, and books.
- Ocean’s 8 (2018) — the entire plot revolves around a heist during the Met Gala: a group of women led by Sandra Bullock targets a $150 million Cartier necklace. For the first time, the museum and Anna Wintour allowed a film crew to shoot inside the actual Costume Institute. The key dinner scene was filmed right beside the Temple of Dendur, where the event takes place every year. Kim Kardashian, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and other celebrities also appeared as extras.
- Gossip Girl — The Met’s grand staircase on Fifth Avenue became one of the series’ most recognizable locations. It is where the characters meet, talk, and discuss life on the Upper East Side.
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler — E. L. Konigsburg’s classic children’s novel follows a brother and sister who secretly move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- The Met Gala, held at the museum every year, has long been a major media event in its own right. Thanks to its red carpet and the stars’ themed outfits, it generates enormous attention in the news and on social media, often rivaling the exhibitions of the Costume Institute itself.
