I recently posted an article about our twenty-two Summer College Interns (see "New Connections in the Permanent Collection"), and invited you to join us for one of our Highlight Tours or Special Topics Tours. In addition to these undergraduate-led tours, beginning July 23, our twelve Summer Graduate Interns will present Gallery Talks: hour-long lectures exploring single subjects in a carefully selected handful of rooms.

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One hundred years ago today, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the doors of its library's new home to art historians, students, and the general public.

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«When you visit the Met this summer, you will likely come across one of our twenty-two lilac-badged Summer College Interns—assisting visitors at one of the Information Desks (sometimes in a language other than English), lugging monographs out of Watson Library, or taking a break in the shade of Big Bambú. Or you may see us—and even join us—as we lead guided tours of the permanent collection.

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Last May, when the seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth-century period rooms in the "old" American Wing building (1924) reopened after several years of renovation, visitors noticed many changes. Some were huge—we had removed several rooms and moved or replaced others—while some were more subtle, like the new lighting. Still others, like the new air handling, electrical wiring, and fire suppression systems, were nearly invisible to the public. But one major change couldn't be ignored: There were computers in the period rooms!

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During my weekly shifts at the reference desk at the Thomas J. Watson Library, I routinely get asked the same question by inquisitive Museum visitors who pass by our doors: "The Museum has a library?" Over the years, I have learned to treat this as an opportunity to promote the library's collection, services, and resources.

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Eighty-five years ago today, on June 12, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a collection of medieval sculpture and architectural fragments from George Grey Barnard (1863–1938), a prominent American sculptor and collector. This acquisition formed the nucleus of what would become The Cloisters, the branch of the Museum located in Northern Manhattan and devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

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Since its doors opened in 1938, The Cloisters—the branch of the Met devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe—has been beloved not only for its extraordinary collection of medieval art, but also for its gardens.

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Ever since its inception in the early 1970s, the contemporary Aboriginal art movement in Australia has been continually developing and expanding to embrace an ever widening group of artists, communities, and artistic styles.

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The exhibition Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu (1910–1997) showcases a rich body of material that offers a rare glimpse into the creative process of a traditional Chinese artist. I spoke with Maxwell K. Hearn, Douglas Dillon Curator in the Museum's Department of Asian Art, about Hosta and Asters, one of the many stunning works on view.

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As the Senior Manager for Concerts & Lectures at the Met I am extremely proud of our ability to present amazing programs each year. While many of our readers are familiar with the Museum's program of scholarly lectures, some of you may not realize that the Met also has a long tradition of presenting musical events, including special programs just for families.

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What do you get when you mix a groundbreaking exhibition, a cutting-edge curatorial team, two enthusiastic Museum educators, and a great American fashion company? A T-shirt design competition for teens!

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«Live snakes, talcum powder, cassette tapes, dust. These are a few of the unusual materials used to create the photographs currently on view in Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection. For many artists today, the process of making a photograph involves much more than just pointing a camera and clicking the shutter. In fact, a number of photographs in this exhibition didn't involve a camera at all.

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This beautiful sculpture, a representation of the boy-king Tutankhamun, is among the nearly sixty objects featured in the current exhibition Tutankhamun's Funeral. I spoke with Dorothea Arnold, the Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman of the Department of Egyptian Art, about the significance and style of this work.

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One hundred forty years ago today, on April 13, 1870, the Legislature of the State of New York granted an act of incorporation that formally established The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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«By all accounts, Harry C. G. Packard (1914–1991) was no ordinary collector. He is known to have crisscrossed the United States multiple times in order to sell works of Japanese art, only to return to Japan to purchase more. He had a most unusual vision; whereas the majority of collectors, scholars, and dealers tend to focus on a particular area or medium, Packard’s ambitions were more encyclopedic, not unlike that of the Met.

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We are just a little over a month into the run of The Art of Illumination—the exhibition with the impossibly long subtitle: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Come see it if you haven't already—or if you have, but couldn't get a turn with one of the magnifying glasses we have provided, come back to see the astounding detail in these magical little pictures.

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Each time I stand before this painting I am impressed by the clever way the artist—the most famous female painter of the seventeenth century—has infused a well-known biblical story with her understanding of a gendered society in which women employed beauty and cleverness to gain the upper hand.

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«Most often, our special exhibitions highlight important aspects of the Met's collection or explore areas of curatorial expertise, but occasionally they give us the chance, instead, to present a type of work that's entirely absent from the collection. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage is one such instance.

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In honor of Women's History Month, I recently spoke with Rebecca Rabinow, associate curator in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, about The Horse Fair, a monumental painting by Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822–1899).

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