Galleries, Exhibitions, and Shops to Open on Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Other Holidays
(New York, August 2, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that its Met Holiday Mondays program, which began in fall 2003, will be extended for an additional three years. Met Holiday Mondays are extra public viewing days that take place on the Mondays of major holiday weekends. Continuation of the program is sponsored by Bloomberg LP.
"Over the past two years, to our great delight, we have welcomed more than 150,000 visitors to the Museum's main building on Monday holidays," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. "The continuing and, I am pleased to say, growing participation of the public is gratifying and we plan to continue to expand the program's scope and reach an even broader audience in the years ahead."
Noted Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Metropolitan Museum: "We hope that New Yorkers from all five boroughs, as well as tourists visiting the City from around the nation and the world, will avail themselves of these special Met Holiday Mondays sponsored by Bloomberg to spend a few hours at the Met, looking at great works of art."
The schedule of upcoming Met Holiday Mondays is: Labor Day (September 5), Columbus Day (October 10), the Monday after Christmas (December 26), Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 16), Presidents' Day (February 20), and Memorial Day (May 29). Prior to 2003, the Museum was closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years.
In addition to the Museum's permanent collection, special exhibitions including Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams – His Art and His Textiles and Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls and Twirls (weather permitting) will be on view on Labor Day.
Family greeters in red aprons will again be present in the Museum's Great Hall to direct families to areas of particular interest.
A different selection of exhibitions will be open on each Met Holiday Monday. The Metropolitan's public cafeteria and several of the gift shops in the main building will be open on all of these special viewing days.
# # #
Press resources