The Metropolitan Museum of Art or “the Met” is one of the largest and most important museums of the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is situated on the eastern border of Central Park in Manhattan, New York City.
Introduction to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a collection of over two million art works. The collection is built of artistic treasures from all over the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art or Met is at constant competition with the Museum of Modern Art. The admission fee to the Met is $20 per person. However the entry fee is entirely optional. The museum has been used as the setting for “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” an award winning children’s book. The museum was the first to display the paintings of Matisse. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s unofficial mascot is a blue faience statuette of a Twelfth Century hippopotamus named William.
History of Metropolitan Museum of Art:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was opened on 20th February 1872. It was housed in a building on 681 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The museum’s art collection was formed by the personal art collection of John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive. John Taylor Johnston was also the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum’s collection soon outgrew its available space. In 1873 the museum shifted its premises from Fifth Avenue to a temporary residence at the Douglas Mansion on west 14th Street. The Metropolitan Museum of Art soon bought land on East Central Park and built its permanent building. There have been a lot of additions to the structure over the years, but the original building is still a part of the present building. At present the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a quarter mile long and takes up a space of more than two million square feet.
Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art started out with a small collection including a Roman Sarcophagus and 174 paintings. Currently the New York based museum has nineteen different departments with more than two million works of art. The nineteen departments are American Decorative Arts, American Paintings and Sculpture, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Arms and Armor, Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, Asian Art, The Costume Institute, Drawings and Prints, Egyptian Art, European Paintings, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Greek and Roman Art, Islamic Art, The Libraries, Medieval Art, Robert Lehman Collection, the Cloisters, Modern Art, Musical instruments and Photographs.
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