Now at the Met

 

Featured Publication:
Photography and the American Civil War

Nadja Hansen, Editorial Assistant, Editorial Department; and Hilary Becker, Administrative Assistant, Editorial Department

Posted: Tuesday, April 30, 2013

"Photography and the American Civil War" book cover

«Photography was invented just twenty years before the American Civil War. In many ways the war—its documentation, its soldiers, its battlefields—was the arena of the camera's debut in America. "The medium of photography was very young at the time the war began but it quickly emerged into the medium it is today," says Jeff Rosenheim, curator of the current exhibition Photography and the American Civil War (on view through September 2), and author of its accompanying catalogue. "I think that we are where we are in photographic history, in cultural history, because of what happened during the Civil War . . . it's the crucible of American history. The war changed the idea of what individual freedom meant; we abolished slavery, we unified our country, we did all those things, but with some really interesting new tools, one of which was photography."

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Event Highlights: April 30–May 1

Posted: Monday, April 29, 2013

The Museum offers hundreds of events each month—including lectures, films, tours, family activities, and more. The following listings are just a sample of our upcoming programs.

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Senses of Springtime Festival

Mike Norris, Museum Educator; and Brittany Prieto, Education Programs Associate

Posted: Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Garden Gathering | 03.9c

«This year, April showers will bring more than just May flowers—they will also bring a free festival inspired by springtime! On Sunday, April 28, visitors of all ages are invited to usher in the season by immersing themselves in the splendors of the Islamic world and the ancient Near East.

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A Monumental Gift to the Met

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Pablo Picasso - Femme assise dans un fauteuil (Eva) (Woman in an Armchair)

«Yesterday was an exciting and historic moment for the Met, as we announced the gift of Leonard Lauder's unrivaled collection of seventy-eight Cubist paintings to the Museum. This is among the greatest contributions to the Metropolitan in the course of its 143-year evolution, in the same league as gifts from J.P. Morgan, Louisine and H.O. Havemeyer, Benjamin Altman, Robert Lehman, Charles and Jayne Wrightsman, and Walter Annenberg—truly transformative collections that have come to the Met.

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An Important Message from the Director

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Thursday, April 4, 2013

Visitors in the galleries

«In recent weeks, you may have read about a lawsuit filed by one of the Metropolitan Museum's Fifth Avenue neighbors. It inaccurately alleges that the Met deceives the public by not making its long-standing pay-what-you-wish admission policy clear enough, and asserts that we are violating a nineteenth-century New York State law that once mandated that we be free to the public. This was followed by a second legal action, filed by the same law firm, seeking monetary damages.

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This Weekend in Met History: March 17

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Friday, March 15, 2013

Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906) | View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph | 13.66

«One hundred years ago this weekend, on March 17, 1913, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired its first painting by the French Post-Impressionist master Paul Cézanne. The Museum purchased Cézanne's View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph at the groundbreaking International Exhibition of Modern Art, popularly known as the Armory Show.

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The 2013 Family Benefit: Heroes and Heroines at the Metropolitan

Kate Dobie, Associate Development Officer

Posted: Monday, March 4, 2013

Young heroes and heroines

«On Monday, February 4, the Met hosted its twenty-first annual Family Benefit for families with kids of all ages. This year's theme, heroes and heroines, was a huge hit with parents and children alike.

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Today in Met History: March 1

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Friday, March 1, 2013

The Douglas Mansion at 128 West 14th Street

One hundred and forty years ago today, on March 1, 1873, The Metropolitan Museum of Art signed a lease for the Douglas Mansion, located at 128 West 14th Street in Manhattan. The rapidly expanding museum had outgrown its original location in the Dodworth Building in midtown and was in need of additional gallery space.

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Photographer Interview: Experiencing Art through Touch

Jennette Mullaney, Former Associate Email Marketing Manager, Department of Digital Media

Posted: Friday, February 8, 2013

Matt Ducklo | Thutmose III, Dynasty 18, ca. 1504–1405 B.C. | 2006

The Metropolitan Museum has a long history of making its collections accessible to blind and partially sighted visitors through touch and description. In the 1970s, the Museum established the Touch Collection, a group of small artworks from different curatorial departments, for the purpose of tactile exploration by blind and partially sighted visitors. Since 1998, these visitors have been invited to engage with a range of Museum objects through touch tours—guided or self-guided visits in which they can explore specific objects with their hands. For several years, photographer Matt Ducklo has captured participants on these tours at the Metropolitan and other museums, creating a body of work that explores how all people—both sighted and otherwise—experience art. I interviewed Matt about his work and how it has affected his own experience of looking at art.

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Today in Met History: February 4

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Monday, February 4, 2013

Today in Met History: February 4

On Monday, February 4, 1963, a unique visitor entered The Metropolitan Museum of Art and remained in the building for the next three and a half weeks. Over one million people clamored to see her during her stay at the Museum, and the press reported extensively on her visit. To the great pleasure of the Metropolitan and its visitors, the Mona Lisa—perhaps the best known painting in the world—had come to the Museum as a loan from the Louvre.

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A New Web Feature: 82nd & Fifth

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Friday, February 1, 2013

We have just launched 82nd & Fifth, a new Web feature that asks one hundred curators from across the Museum to each talk about a work of art from the Met's collection that changed the way they see the world. One work. One curator. Two minutes at a time.

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The Devoted Collector: William H. Riggs and the Department of Arms and Armor

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Portrait of William H. Riggs taken in Paris, about 1858

On Friday, May 9, 1913, the ship La France steamed into New York Harbor carrying William Henry Riggs, a wealthy American and lifelong collector of arms and armor. Riggs was returning from France to his native city for the first time in over forty years in order to donate his impressive collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Near Neighbors: Brooklyn Dressmakers in the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

P. Grace Hernandez, 2010–12 Polaire Weissman Fellow, The Costume Institute

Posted: Monday, January 14, 2013

Dress, Evening, 1912–1914 | Wedding Dress, 1893

When the Brooklyn Museum transferred its costume collection to the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute in January 2009, the Met acquired an impressive array of garments from renowned European and American designers. Some highlights from the collection were featured in the related 2010 exhibitions American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity at the Met and American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Yet the collection also contains a set of objects with noteworthy local origins: garments and accessories made by Brooklyn-based clothing and accessory makers—milliners, tailors, and dressmakers—working independently or in department stores during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Marking the Arms and Armor Centennial

Donald J. La Rocca, Curator, Arms and Armor

Posted: Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Arms and Armor

One hundred years ago, on October 28, 1912, the Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art officially created the Department of Arms and Armor. From relatively modest beginnings, the department rapidly developed into one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of its type in the world.

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Thomas Hart Benton's America Today

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2012

America Today

I am thrilled to announce that Thomas Hart Benton's epic mural America Today—a sweeping panorama of American life, has been donated by AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Art of the Islamic World: A New Resource for Teachers

Claire Moore, Assistant Museum Educator

Posted: Friday, November 30, 2012

Art of the Islamic World

The importance of the Islamic world within current geopolitics and the global context in which we live makes the study of these regions essential in K–12 classrooms around the world.

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This Weekend in Met History: November 24

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Wednesday, November 21, 2012

William B. Astor

One hundred and thirty-seven years ago this weekend, on November 24, 1875, the American businessman and philanthropist William Backhouse Astor died. Just three years earlier, Astor had been responsible for a milestone in Metropolitan Museum of Art history: donating to the newly established institution its first work of art made by an American, the marble statue California by Hiram Powers.

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This Weekend in Met History: October 28

Aleksandr Gelfand, Intern, Museum Archives

Posted: Friday, October 26, 2012

Edward S. Harkness, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives

October 28, 2012, marks the centennial of the election of Edward S. Harkness as Trustee and Fellow for Life of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A lifelong philanthropist estimated to have donated one hundred million dollars to charity, Harkness spent twenty-eight years working on the Museum's behalf. A number of his gifts are among the most beloved and visited works of art within the Met's exhibition galleries.

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Antonio Tempesta's View of Rome: Portraying the Baroque Splendor of the Eternal City

Femke Speelberg, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Posted: Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Antonio Tempesta (Italian, Florence 1555–1630 Rome). Plan of the City of Rome: Part 7, with a Dedication to Camillo Pamphili, the Vatican and Part of the City Wall

In 1593, the Florence-born artist, Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630), published one of his absolute masterpieces in print: a View of Rome composed out of twelve folio-sized, etched plates. When joined together in two rows of six, the print forms an impressive frieze measuring almost 3.5 by 8 feet (fig. 1).

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Fright Night!

Molly Kysar, Assistant Museum Educator for Gallery and Studio Programs, Education; and Brittany Prieto, Education Programs Associate

Posted: Monday, October 22, 2012

John Paul Pennebaker, Sealed Power Piston Rings, 1933

Visitors of all ages are invited to join us this Friday, October 26, for Fright Night!, an evening of dark tales, photography workshops, drawing activities, films, and more. Inspired by the eerie images in the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, the festivities will allow visitors to connect to the exhibition and the Museum's collections in a variety of spooky ways.

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Book Smart

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Thursday, October 11, 2012

There's nothing like a good read, and today we're adding 643 books to your reading list. MetPublications puts nearly all of our publications—past, present, and future—online. That out-of-print catalogue from the Met's groundbreaking 1985 India exhibition? Now you can read it. The 1970 catalogue of the Wrightsman porcelain collection? That's there, too, along with hundreds of other titles from across the Museum.

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Ancient Egyptian Ostraca: A Reevaluation

Jennifer Babcock, 2009–2011 Hagop Kevorkian Curatorial Fellow

Posted: Wednesday, October 10, 2012

ostracon

Although I am an Egyptologist, I recently worked for two years in the Museum's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art as the 2009–2011 Hagop Kevorkian Curatorial Fellow. The experience was invaluable, not only for its curatorial training, but also for the opportunity to approach my dissertation topic—ancient Egyptian ostraca—from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

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All Art Was Once Contemporary

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Friday, October 5, 2012

Last March I posted a message about my time at TED, the annual four-day conference dedicated to the concept of "Ideas Worth Spreading." My talk is now available, and I'm pleased to share it. I hope it inspires you to visit the Met and spread some of the great ideas that connect our collections, our scholarship, and our visitors.

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In Memoriam: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

Posted: Monday, October 1, 2012

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

The Trustees and staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art mourn the passing of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose wise stewardship and tireless devotion benefited this institution in countless ways over the past four decades.

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Live Stream: Patti Smith in Concert

Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2012

Patti Smith

On Friday, September 28, at 7:00 p.m., rock legend Patti Smith will pay tribute to Andy Warhol, her fellow traveler on the cutting edge of the New York art and music scene in the 1970s. The concert is sold out, but a live audio stream of the performance will be available in Met Media.

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The French Franciscan Cloister in New York

Céline Brugeat, 2011–2012 Annette Kade Fellow

Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2012

Element from Cordeliers of Tarbes at the Cloisters

The Cloisters incorporates significant sculptural ensembles from medieval cloisters from the south of France, traditionally identified as coming from four sites: Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, Trie-en-Bigorre, and Bonnefont-en-Comminges. (Ensembles from a fifth French medieval cloister come from Froville, in northern France.) Bonnefont Cloister includes two galleries that frame a beautiful medieval garden overlooking the Hudson River.

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¡Fiesta!

Evan Levy, Manager for Children's Educational Materials, Education

Posted: Monday, September 24, 2012

Fiesta

Storytime in the Arms and Armor galleries? Salsa dancing in the Vélez Blanco Patio? Mariachi music in The Charles Engelhard Court? It's ¡Fiesta!, a Museum-wide festival taking place next Saturday, September 29, in celebration of Hispanic and Latin American art and cultures.

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The High-Tech Met

Jennette Mullaney, Former Associate Email Marketing Manager, Department of Digital Media

Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Met Museum 3-D scanning and printing Hackathon, June 1–2, 2012

Twenty-five digital artists and programmers descended upon the Metropolitan Museum's Art Studio on June 1 and 2 for our first 3-D scanning and printing Hackathon.

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Spring Fashion Forecast for The Costume Institute = PUNK

Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Left: Sid Vicious, 1977, Photograph © Dennis Morris, All Rights Reserved; Right: Karl Lagerfeld for House of Chanel, Photograph by David Sims

The next The Costume Institute exhibition swerves to the streets and clubs of New York and London, then to ateliers and runways with PUNK: Chaos to Couture. The exhibition, on view from May 9 through August 11, 2013, will examine punk's impact from the 1970s to its continuing influence on high fashion now.

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If Tea Bowls Could Talk

Denise Patry Leidy, Curator, Department of Asian Art

Posted: Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Bowl with hare's fur decoration

Hundreds of stories are embedded in the Chinese ceramics that have recently been reinstalled on the Great Hall Balcony (Gallery 200 through Gallery 205), at the heart of the Museum. Some of these stories tell of technological advances in ceramic production, others illustrate aspects of Chinese culture, and many—including comparative pieces from around the world—illustrate China's continuous and complicated impact in global ceramic history. All of these stories intertwine in fascinating and, sometimes, unexpected ways.

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What's New in Met Media

Maureen Coyle, Twelve-Month Intern in Digital Media

Posted: Thursday, August 9, 2012

We have quite a few new items in Met Media this week, including videos of several symposia. The Discoveries symposium, held in conjunction with the opening of the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, featured scholarship focused on works on paper, textiles, the Damascus Room, the city of Nishapur, and stucco and ceramic figures.

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Digitizing the Libraries' Collections: Industrial Arts at the Metropolitan Museum, 1917–40

Antoniette M. Guglielmo, 2011–2012 Sylvan C. Coleman and Pamela Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art

Posted: Monday, July 30, 2012

Installation views

When the Museum Library took its first steps toward digitizing rare materials from its collection over two years ago, one of the first groups of items we selected for scanning was a set of pamphlets that accompanied a landmark series of American industrial arts exhibitions from 1917 to 1940.

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An Evening with Illustrator Sophie Blackall

Leah High, Public Services Librarian, Thomas J. Watson Library

Posted: Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Sophie Blackall © 2011 | Transit poster commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit (detail)

As the public services librarian in the Museum's Thomas J. Watson and Nolen libraries, I love having the opportunity to develop programs for children, teens, and adults that connect the libraries' collections to art in the Met's galleries. Visitors are often unaware that the Museum has libraries, and they are particularly surprised to learn about Nolen, which is open to readers of all ages.

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From the Blogs

Eileen Willis, Website Managing Editor

Posted: Monday, July 16, 2012

Genevieve and Alisha write about an intriguing photograph in the exhibition Spies in the House of Art, and nine new posts conclude the blog accompanying Byzantium and Islam, which closed July 8.

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Buddhism along the Silk Road

Kurt Behrendt, Assistant Curator, Department of Asian Art

Posted: Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Buddhism Along the Silk Road

At the end of the fifth century, the great Buddhist centers of Gandhara in Northern Pakistan collapsed in the wake of Hun invasions that swept in from the area north of Afghanistan. The current exhibition Buddhism along the Silk Road: 5th–8th Century (on view through February 10, 2013) focuses on art produced as a result of contact with the dispersed Gandharan Buddhist communities, who were moving into Afghanistan and up into the Western parts of Central Asia.

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Met 3-D: The Museum's First 3-D Scanning and Printing Hackathon

Jackie Terrassa, Managing Museum Educator for Gallery and Studio Programs, Education; and Don Undeen, Manager of Media Lab, Digital Media

Posted: Thursday, May 31, 2012

Artists come to the Met every day to be inspired, discovering visual and technical solutions in works from every corner of the world, ranging from ancient times to the present day. They might attend a program, sketch from objects, or create their own copies of original paintings, as they have done since 1872 when the Met first allowed artists to re-create works of art on display. In that spirit, for the first time ever, on June 1 and 2, approximately twenty-five digital artists and programmers will gather at the Met to experiment with the latest 3-D scanning and replicating technologies. Their aim will be to use the Museum's vast encyclopedic collections as a departure point for the creation of new work.

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Behind the Scenes of Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City

Thomas B. Ling, The Photograph Studio

Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Each spring, as soon as the weather gets warm, friends start asking me when the Museum's Roof Garden will be open. By the time they ask, I've already been excited for months, anticipating the installation process and the opportunity to collaborate with the exhibiting artist (or artists), curators, fabricators, and installers who, each year, transform one of my favorite places in the city into a totally new space.

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Through Monet's Garden, a Collaboration Blossoms

Masha Turchinsky, Senior Publishing and Creative Manager, Digital Media

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2012

Monet's Garden App

It's springtime in New York, and to celebrate we've collaborated with the New York Botanical Garden on a free app that invites you to experience Claude Monet's living masterpiece, his garden at Giverny.

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Murder Goes Mobile at the Met!

Alice W. Schwarz, Museum Educator; Masha Turchinsky, Senior Publishing and Creative Manager, Digital Media; and Katherine Abbey, Twelve-Month Education Intern

Posted: Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Title screen from the Murder at the Met mobile game

What do Madame X, a murder, and a mobile phone have in common? They are all part of Murder at the Met: An American Art Mystery, the first mobile detective game created by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with Green Door Labs and TourSphere.

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Eight New Languages for My Audio Tour of the Met

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Thursday, April 26, 2012

Audio Guide

We like to think that the language of art is universal, but a museum like the Met, with an audience that is forty percent international, cannot ignore the global scope of its visitors. There are some days when the Met's Great Hall is a glorious cacophony of languages from all over the world—and from all over New York.

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Met Museum Presents...

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Thursday, April 12, 2012

We are delighted to unveil the 2012–13 season of Met Museum Presents, our newly renamed performing arts and talks series.

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Museum's Holiday Monday Program Expands to Include The Cloisters

Posted: Friday, March 30, 2012

The Cloisters museum and gardens

The Cloisters museum and gardens—the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe—will be open to the public on Met Holiday Mondays beginning April 9.

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Featured Publication—Interview with the Photographer: Joe Coscia

Nadja Hansen, Editorial Assistant, Editorial Department

Posted: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

European Sculpture, 1400–1900

Chief Photographer Joe Coscia has worked at the Museum for more than twenty years. One of his recent assignments was to photograph the works of art for Masterpieces of European Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400–1900, written by Ian Wardropper and published last fall. I asked him about the unique work of a museum photographer, as well as the collaborations and complex choices involved in shooting the masterpieces illustrated in this book.

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Today in Met History: March 20

Anna Bernhard, Archives Assistant, Museum Archives

Posted: Tuesday, March 20, 2012

First Building in Central Park

One hundred and forty years ago today, on March 20, 1872, the City of New York's Department of Public Parks designated the site between 79th and 84th Streets in Central Park for the future Metropolitan Museum of Art building.

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What's Your Met?

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Thursday, March 15, 2012

Seth Meyers

"What's your Met?" We asked this question of eleven celebrities, and were delighted by the range of answers we got from Alex Rodriguez, Claire Danes, Marc Jacobs, Alicia Keys, Jeff Koons, Seth Meyers, Zaha Hadid, Hugh Jackman, Kristen Wiig, and Carmelo and La La Anthony.

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Featured Publication: The Renaissance Portrait

Nadja Hansen, Editorial Assistant, Editorial Department

Posted: Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Renaissance Portrait Catalogue

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Met recently published The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini, a 432-page hardcover catalogue with 275 full-color illustrations, available in The Met Store.

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My Time at TED

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO

Posted: Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Thomas P. Campbell

I am just back from Long Beach, CA, where I spoke at TED, the annual four-day conference started twenty-five years ago and dedicated to the concept of "Ideas Worth Spreading."

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This Weekend in Met History: February 20

James Moske, Managing Archivist, Museum Archives

Posted: Friday, February 17, 2012

Detail of the Dodworth lease

One hundred and forty years ago, on February 20, 1872, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors to the public for the first time.

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Displaying Islamic Art at the Metropolitan: A Retrospective Look

Rebecca Lindsey, Member of the Visiting Committee, Department of Islamic Art

Posted: Thursday, February 2, 2012

Postcard showing Gallery E-14, the so-called "Persian Room," 1912

A Metropolitan Museum patron interested in Islamic art in the 1880s would have found little of relevance on display. By 1910, however, the situation was very much improved, and in the century since then, the Islamic art displays at the Museum have become the largest in the Western world.

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Love at the Met: Historic Valentines and Paper Kisses

Femke Speelberg, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Posted: Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Heart-shaped valentines card, 1850–1899 | 1989.1154
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Now at the Met offers in-depth articles and multimedia features about the Museum's current exhibitions, events, research, announcements, behind-the-scenes activities, and more.

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