Difference between revisions of "Metropolitan Museum of Art"

Revision as of 19:01, June 5, 2009

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (sometimes abbreviated as "the Met," though this is also often used for The Metropolitan Opera), located on the edge of Central Park in the Upper East Side of New York City, New York, is one of the largest and most extensive art museums in the United States and even the world, with more than 2 million works of art in its permanent collection^[1] and more than 2 million square feet of floorspace^[2]. The art is organized into twenty-two "curatorial departments."^[3] The first work ever to be acquired by the museum is a marble Roman sarcophagus listed as "Asiatic garland sarcophagus"^[4]; it is given the categorization number "70.1" because it was acquired in the year 1870 (the same year that the museum itself was founded) and because it was the first piece of art acquired.^[5]

Notable works of art on display at the museum include a print of Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a print of Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia, five paintings by Johannes Vermeer (the largest collection anywhere in the world), thirty-seven paintings by Monet, twenty-one oil paintings by Cézanne, eighteen paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco's Vista de Toledo, Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates, and Duccio's Madonna and Child, among many, many more. Relatively unique to the museum is an extensive collection of about five thousand musical instruments from all over the world and throughout history.

The museum also operates a satellite institution known as "The Cloisters"^[6] to house many works from its Medieval art collection. The Cloisters are located in Fort Tyron Park on the northern tip of Manhattan Island, just a few miles away from the main building.

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