The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest in America in New York. The world calls this "Met". This has become popular as the most visited museum in the Western Hemisphere. The museum's permanent collection includes over two million works.
The Metropolitan Art Gallery was founded in 1870 with the
mission of bringing art and art education to the American people. The museum's
permanent collection consists of works of art from Classical Antiquity and Ancient
Egypt, paintings and sculptures by all European Old Masters, and an extensive
collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains a large collection of
African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum has an
encyclopedic collection of musical instruments, clothing, and accessories, as
well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several remarkable
interiors from 1st century Rome to modern American design are installed in its
galleries.
The location of the museum was discussed. It is in the main
building on Fifth Avenue on the eastern edge of Central Park on the Upper East
Side, which is about 1000 miles long and is divided among 17 curatorial
departments. When it comes to Metropolitan, the most unique feature is the number
of collections.
There are 17 separate departments within the art gallery, each with its dedicated curators and a panel of scholars. The collection includes works of art from Classical Antiquity and Ancient Egypt, as paintings and sculptures by all European masters. and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met holds a large collection of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and ancient weapons and armor from around the world. Many period rooms, from first-century Rome to modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.
The history of the museum goes back a long way.
19th century.
The New York State Legislature granted the Metropolitan
Museum of Art an act of incorporation on April 13, 1870, to establish and
maintain a museum and art library. Founders included businessmen and financial
institutions, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day who wanted to
bring art and art education to the American people. The museum first opened on
February 20, 1872, in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue. John Taylor
Johnston served as its first president and George Palmer Putnam as its founding
superintendent. Other industrialists, artists, and scientists served as
co-founders, including Howard Potter and Salim Howe Wales.
Luigi Palma di Cesnola was named its first director and
served from 1879 to 1904. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by
Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and other businessmen and financiers to bring art and
art education to the American people. The space quickly outgrew it and in 1880
it moved to the present building. Between 1879 and 1895, the museum created and
operated a series of educational programs to provide vocational training and
classes in fine arts.
20th century.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated its Centennial
with exhibitions, symposia, concerts, lectures, the reopening of refurbished
galleries, special tours, social events, and another programming for eighteen
months from October 1969 through the spring of 1971. The program was directed
by William Kolodney and Hilde Limondjian, and the governance of the museum was
expanded to include a chairman of the board of trustees in contemplation of a
large bequest from the estate of Robert Lehman. The museum has called it
"one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in
the United States".
21st Century.
In 2009, Michael Gross published The Secret History of the
Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum, an unauthorized social
history. In 2012, the by-laws of the museum were amended to recognize the
office of the chairman as having authority over the assignment and review of
both the offices of president and director. From 2016 to 2020, the museum
operated a modern and contemporary art gallery at 945 Madison Avenue, a Marcel
Breuer-designed building at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan's Upper
East Side. In January 2018, museum president Daniel Weiss announced that the
century-old policy of free admission would be replaced by a $25 charge to
out-of-state and foreign visitors, effective March 2018. The museum temporarily
closed in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened in late August.
In September 2020, Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha/Nde
descent) was appointed the museum's inaugural Associate Curator of Native
American Art. In May 2021, the museum installed a plaque on its Fifth Avenue
facade in recognition of indigenous communities and of the fact that the museum
is situated in what was historically Lenapehoking. In November, the Met
received a $125 million donation from Oscar L. Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang. The Met
named its modern and contemporary art galleries after the Tangs and hired Moody
Nolan and Frida Escobedo to renovate the Tang wing.
Metropolitan's most impressive collections are in the
geographically grouped section. There is also a global unclassified collection
here.
First, we turn to the global classification. Here you will
find the art of the ancient Asana, the art of Africa, Oceania, and the
Americas, the art of Asia, especially the art of Egypt and Greco-Roman art, as
well as the American wing, European painting, and European sculpture and decorative
arts, and the art of Islam.
By the end of the 19th century, the Met had collected more
than 7,000 antiquities and artifacts from the Far East. The features of the
Late Bronze Age include a group of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian
figures, in the western palace of the 2nd Assyrian king.
Although the Met first acquired a collection of Peruvian
antiquities in 1882, it was not until 1969 that American businessman and
philanthropist Nelson A. Rockefeller began a joint effort with the museum. A
private gallery was opened in 1968 and opened to the public in 1982 under the
title "Michael C Rockefeller Wing".
The collection of Asian art dates to the early days of the
museum. Currently, the Asian collection consists of more than 35,000 pieces.
The Asian Department of the Met has a pan-Asian civilization known in Asia, and
the exhibits include a pan-Asian element, from painting and printmaking to
sculpture and metalwork.
As for Egyptian art, most of the Met's original Egyptian works come from private collections, but archaeological excavations at the museum between 1906 and 1942 revealed only half of the current collection. There is an assemblage of over 26,000 pieces dating from the Paleolithic to the Ptolemaic period.
The Greco-Roman collection is extremely impressive and
currently contains more than 17,000 objects. The museum's first entry point is
the Roman sarcophagus and the Greco-Roman collection dates to the museum's
history.
There are also about 1700 European paintings and the
current curator of the paintings is Stefan Wolohojian. One of the museum's
largest collections of European sculpture and decorative arts, it houses more
than 50,000 separate pieces from the 15th century to the early 20th century.
The collection is particularly concentrated on Renaissance sculpture.
The Department of American Wings was added on January 16,
2012, and provides a history of American art from the 18th to the early 19th
century.
A special feature found here is the collection of Islamic
artifacts. This is the world's largest collection of Islamic artifacts and
includes artifacts of cultural and secular origin, mainly from the Middle East,
showing the rise of Islam and contrasting with the ancient Near East
collection.
The geographically unnamed collection is extremely
interesting. Here is a special collection. These include war and armor,
costume, paintings, and prints, as well as the Robert Liman Collection,
medieval art and the cloisters, the cloisters museum, and garden, as well as
art and musical instruments, film, and portraits.
The museum houses two libraries, the Thomas J. Watson and
Nolan libraries. There are many interesting topics to talk about
"Met", the most attractive museum in the world. See you in another
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