The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest and finest art museums. Located in New York City’s Central Park, along Fifth Avenue (from 80th to 84th Streets), its collection includes more than two million works of art spanning 5000 years of world culture from prehistory to the present, and from every part of the globe.
The Metropolitan was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens — businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day — who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Last year it was visited by 5.2 million people.
The Metropolitan’s paintings collection also began in 1870, when three private European collections, 174 paintings in total, came to the Museum. The collections continued to grow, and during the twentieth century the Metropolitan became one of the world’s great art centres. Moving to its current site in 1880, the original Gothic Revival-style building has since greatly expanded in size, and various additions surround the original structure.
The Metropolitan’s vast holdings represent a series of collections, each of which ranks in its category among the finest in the world. The Metropolitan is also one of the world’s great repositories of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.
Presenting more than 30 exhibitions each year, representing a wide range of artists, eras and cultures, the Metropolitan has 17 curatorial departments, and its staff includes more than 1800 full-time employees and 900 volunteers. Thomas P Campbell, a distinguished curator at the Museum, was appointed Director and CEO from January 2009.
‘American Impressionism and Realism: A Landmark Exhibition from the Met’ features 71 paintings from the Metropolitan’s American Wing, which houses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of American art in existence. The collection's 15 000 paintings, sculptures, and decorative art objects are all accessible to the public, on three floors of the gallery and in study areas.
With 24 period rooms offering an unparalleled view of the history of American domestic life, the American Wing's temporary closure for renovation enabled significant works from its collection to be displayed in ‘American Impressionism and Realism: A Landmark Exhibition from the Met’. While regularly lending individual works to important exhibitions around the world, the Metropolitan's collection is rarely toured, making 'American Impressionism and Realism' an exclusive opportunity to see these works together.
The collection of paintings housed in the Metropolitan's American Wing illustrates almost all phases of the history of American art from the late eighteenth century through artists born before 1877. The collection includes important works by artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, Maurice Prendergast and Mary Cassatt.
Since its establishment in 1870, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired many important examples of American art. Today, the American Wing’s collection is overseen by two curatorial departments: American Paintings and Sculpture, established in 1948, and American Decorative Arts, organised in 1934.
