Metropolitan Museum of Art

1. The first Metropolitan Museum of Art was located in a brownstone at 681 Fifth Avenue, then in a mansion at 128 W 14th Street. All were temporary locations until a permanent facility could be built. A Central Park location for the museum was first hinted at in 1869 by publisher George P. Putnam.2. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were opposed to the construction of public buildings within the park. They eventually allowed one provision: when an area could not easily be incorporated into park landscape. One such spot was the current location of the museum along 5th Avenue, where the architects deemed any large buildings placed there would be “seen from no other point of the Park” – while the whole of the territory thus enclosed was too small for the formation of spacious pastoral grounds.” (Morrison H. Heckscher, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art: An Architectural History”).3. Calvert Vaux (with Jacob Wrey Mould) was given the commission to design the first wing of the museum. The Medieval Hall (Gallery 305), which is in the center of the museum complex today, was the first wing built and is now surrounded by extensions on all sides. It was completed in 1880, and the interior looked very different in its original form. The Romanesque-style interior that present-day visitors know actually dates from a 1930’s renovation.4. Richard Morris Hunt died before construction began on the famous 5th Avenue façade that visitors have known as the Met’s main entrance since 1902, but his son carried out the design almost to his specifications. Thirty-one pieces of sculpture were designed for it, but a lack of funds left piles of uncarved stone atop the columns which has become an “accepted part of the façade.” (Heckscher). In Hunt’s original design, the four columns were to be topped by sculpture groups representing ‘four great periods of art’: Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance and Modern. Between each pair of columns sat a niche where Hunt intended to set a copy of one great work from each historical era.” (Gregory Gilmartin).5. Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates have been working on the museum since 1967. This aerial view of the museum from 1991 shows the amalgamation of extensions that were constructed over the last 136 years. Heckscher writes that “the resulting structure thus represents in microcosm more than a century of American architectural history.” Who knows what exciting renovations and new spaces the next century may hold? Incidentally, Kevin Roche is also the lead architect at the other museum technically within Central Park’s bounds, the American Museum of Natural History.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (“The Met”) is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States. It is also among the most visited art museums in the world. Its collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a broad collection of art, architecture and artifacts from Medieval Europe.The permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and a collection of American and modern art. “The Met” preserves works of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several interiors from first-century Rome through modern American design, are displayed in its galleries.The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum is located in New York City's Central Park and last year was visited by 5.2 million people. Collection Highlights: American paintings and sculpture, American decorative arts, Asian art, Arts of Africa and Oceania, European paintings.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art