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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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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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?" 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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«In the words of the historian Jacob Burckhardt, fifteenth-century Italy was "the place where the notion of the individual was born." In keeping with this notion, early Renaissance Italy hosted the first great age of portraiture in Europe.

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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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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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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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"Pity my life and be my wife."

These words were delivered in a round, white box to a Miss Oliver in Hythe, Southampton, in the mid-nineteenth century. The box contained a beautiful Valentine's Day card covered in lace, with a basket of textile flowers in its center. Although we may never know if Miss Oliver accepted the somewhat woefully expressed petition of the man who loved her, we do know that the card and even its container survived the test of time, cherished at the very least as a keepsake.

Boxed Valentine's Day Card (Lid), 1840–1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Mrs. Richard Riddel, 1981 (1981.1136.186)

Miss Oliver's card is not the only one of its kind. Greeting cards—and Valentine's Day cards, in particular—have become a beloved collector's item. Through the bequests of several avid collectors, the Department of Drawings and Prints holds a large group of these cards and gifts within our extensive collection of ephemera. With objects dating from as early as the eighteenth century, the Met's collection of valentines illustrates almost 250 years of traditions related to the holiday, and a selection of this material, principally from the collection of Mrs. Richard Riddell (American, 1910–2010), is on view in the current rotation of selections from the permanent collection in the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Gallery.

The association between love and Saint Valentine began in the Middle Ages, but the first known traces of lovers exchanging short, romantic notes on his feast day (February 14) don't appear until the seventeenth century. Over time, more attention was paid to the presentation of these messages in the form of letters, poems, rebuses, cards, and other gifts. Using the latest inventions in decorative paper and graphic arts—colored, embossed papers and (chromo-) lithographs, for example—some of these "tokens of love" became veritable masterpieces of virtuosic craftsmanship.

Germany in particular seems to have played a leading role in the development of the valentine industry and, accordingly, a large part of the earliest valentines in our collection have a German provenance. England followed suit, with a particularly thriving gift card industry during the Victorian period. The United States imported many of these items from Europe, but eventually started to produce its own cards and gifts. Because American tastes were still strongly linked to the European continent throughout the nineteenth century, it's often hard to determine a valentine's distinct place of manufacture without additional information.

Heart-shaped valentines card, 1850–1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Morrison H. Heckscher, 1989 (1989.1154)

Various types of preserved cards show that many clever and endearing ways have been used to express affection—not just to a romantic interest, but also to friends, siblings, and other family members. Although each piece strongly reflects the etiquette and taste of its era, the intimate messages they contain often transcend time and place. What is most striking is how delicate, elaborate, and even exuberant the cards and gifts can be. Many cards were made in relief with craftily cut-out paper frames—made to look like lace, for example, or covered in gilding—and embellished with colorful scraps, dried and textile flowers, beads, precious stones, fabrics, and many other decorative materials.

Left: Boxed Valentine's Day Card (Lid), 1840–1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Mrs. Richard Riddel, 1981 (1981.1136.195); Right: Boxed Valentine's Day Card (Lid), 1840–1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Mrs. Richard Riddel, 1981 (1981.1136.187);

Because of their three-dimensional quality, these cards were often presented in custom-made boxes, which were, in turn, beautifully decorated. It's not surprising that many of these richly clad, hopeful solicitations were treasured and safeguarded by their recipients, allowing us a glimpse into these ephemeral yet priceless expressions of love.

Paper Kisses

Left: Master bxg (German (?), active ca. 1470–1490). The Lovers, 15th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934 (34.38.6); Right: Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916). States of Mind: The Farewells, 1911. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989 (1990.38.22a,b)

Another meaningful gesture of love included in the current rotation is found in drawings and prints exploring the theme of the kiss. From the cheeky courtly lovers by the fifteenth-century Master bxg to the anonymous figures caught up in a swirl of movement in Umberto Boccioni's drawing for States of Mind: The Farewells, each kiss has its own story and significance.

In some cases, a kiss is just a kiss—as in Edvard Munch's 1902 woodcut The Kiss IV. In other instances, artists have adopted the kiss as a way of portraying something more abstract: Hendrick Goltzius chose a kissing couple to illustrate Touch in his Five Senses series; William Blake depicted a man and woman rushing into each other's arms and kissing to personify Robert Blair's "Reunion of the Body and Soul" from the poem The Grave (1743).

Luigi Schiavonetti (Italian, 1765–1810). The Reunion of the Soul & the Body, from The Grave, a Poem by Robert Blair, March 1, 1813. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917 (17.3.2400)

Mythology's many interesting love stories have induced artists to create ingenious, sensual, and perhaps even slightly bewildering scenes of kissing. A case in point is the painting of Leda and the Swan that Michelangelo painted for the Duke of Ferrara (which ended up in the collection of King François I of France). Although the painting was lost, several copies were made, including an engraving by the Netherlandish engraver and publisher Cornelis Bos.

Cornelis Bos (Netherlandish, ca. 1510?–before 1566). Leda and the Swan, 1544–66. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Harry G. Friedman, 1957 (57.658.153)

Through reproductions such as this one, Michelangelo's original, extremely sensual, yet tender and convincing rendering of the story has been preserved. We see Leda straddling a graceful swan—a disguise adopted by Zeus to seduce her—right at the moment when she gently kisses his beak as a sign of surrender to his unwavering advances.

Mythology also offered the perfect framework for artists to experiment with suggestive imagery without causing offense. Illustrations of beloved antique sources held a legitimate place in the wide range of acceptable subjects that didn't breach the lines of propriety, which was a necessary concern for artists. In the 1520s, for example, the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi was imprisoned by Pope Clement VII over his involvement in the production of a book that contained images of everyday men and women making love. A few decades later, Giulio Bonasone cleverly avoided a similar persecution by choosing Greek gods as the protagonists in his provocative print series Loves of the Gods. (However, the fact that it is difficult to identify most of Bonasone's gods today indicates that their guises were thin enough to be ignored by the viewer.)

Guilio Bonasone (Italian, 1531–after 1576). Apollo and Leucothea, from the Loves of the Gods Loves of the Gods, 1531–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1962 [62.602.145(4)]

Aside from the many ways kisses were employed to convey a story or additional meaning, this overview also reveals that rendering a convincing kiss on paper is not easy from a technical point of view—it involves both a thorough understanding of anatomy and a strong command of perspectival drawing. Perhaps that's why lovers' kisses are relatively rare in the graphic arts, more often implied than actually displayed. This may also be one of the most intriguing attractions of this type of imagery, as it allows the viewer to fill in the details of what will happen next.

Left: Heroic Africans exhibition catalogue; Right: Commemorative figure of a priestess, 19th century. Cameroon, Grassfields region, Bangwa chiefdom. Bamileke peoples. Wood, pigments. Musée Dapper, Paris (3343)

Alisa LaGamma, curator of Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures and author of the accompanying catalogue, recently discussed the Commemorative figure of a priestess, one of the masterpieces from the exhibition, for the Yale University Press blog. Don't miss the rare opportunity to see the powerful figure, on loan from the Musée Dapper, Paris (3343). The exhibition at the Met closes on January 29 before traveling to the Museum Rietberg in Zurich.

This week we celebrated the completion of the rebuilding of the Met's extraordinary American Wing, and in doing so unequivocally acknowledged the importance of the arts of this nation to the Metropolitan Museum.

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Reading Room of the National Library of Portugal, Lisbon

By any standards, Lisbon's Hebrew Bible—now on view at the Met—is a masterpiece of medieval illumination. Its acquisition in 1804 by the National Library of Portugal may be credited to the enlightened intellectualism of the institution's first librarian, António Ribeiro dos Santos. The library had been founded by Queen Maria I on February 29, 1796, as the "Royal Public Library of the Court," at the instigation of Fra Manuel do Cenáculo Villas-Boas, bishop of Beja and archbishop of Evora. The archbishop's own collections, those of Ribeiro dos Santos, and those of Portugal's Jesuit Colleges formed the nucleus of the collection. In that distinctly Roman Catholic context, the Library's early acquisition of an illuminated Hebrew Bible may seem, at first, a surprising addition. After all, the Jewish community of Portugal had been forcibly expelled in 1496, and the Inquisition did not officially end there until 1821.

The First Librarian

Portuguese Painter. António Ribeiro dos Santos, 1790 (?). Oil on canvas. Galeria dos Directores, Colecção de Pintura da  Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon

In every regard, the training and background of António Ribeiro dos Santos, the first librarian, seem very traditional and church oriented. Born in 1745 in Oporto, he was sent to Brazil to study under Jesuits in Rio de Janeiro. When he returned to Portugal in 1764, he studied canon law at University of Coimbra, completing his dissertation in 1771. Six years later, he was named librarian of his university. In his official portrait, preserved at the National Library, he wears the Insignia of the Royal Military order of Saint James of the Sword, founded in the Middle Ages as an order of knights for the protection of Christian pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. Looking beyond his résumé and his official portrait, however, it becomes apparent that Ribeiro dos Santos was possessed of a more independent spirit than appearances would suggest.

The eighteenth-century Joanina Library of the University of Coimbra, Portugal

An Enlightened Thinker

We can begin to glimpse something of his patterns of thinking by considering the guidelines that he drafted for the Coimbra university library during his tenure there, especially concerning the acquisition of books to enhance its collections. Ribeiro dos Santos felt strongly that the collections should be constantly enriched, and advocated including books that historically had been forbidden by the defunct Royal Censorship Board. (At the National Library, these would eventually include a fifteenth-century Portuguese edition of a Perpetual Almanac, the work of Abraham Zacuto, a Jewish mathematician and astronomer, who had been in the employ of the Portuguese King Manuel I before the Expulsion.)

As director of the university library, Ribeiro dos Santos argued in favor of opening the collections to the public, so that people could be informed about arts and sciences in other nations. Ribeiro dos Santos is also recognized today for his opposition to slavery and for wrestling with issues such as capital punishment. When accused of espousing populist and republican doctrines, Ribeiro dos Santos defended his notion of tolerance to the Court as rooted in the faith of the Catholic Church.

Ribeiro dos Santos's publications attest to his deep interest in the contributions of different historic cultures—including Greek, Visigothic, Arabic, and Celtic—to the Portuguese language. Moreover, he published a multivolume series of memories about the sacred literature of the Portuguese Jews, from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. He also studied historical, anti-Jewish writings by ecclesiastics, including his Portuguese predecessors, and the "Civil and Religious Status of Portuguese Jews and their Emigration to Different Parts of the World" in two volumes. Indeed, some consider Ribeiro dos Santos the first Portuguese intellectual since the Expulsion to have had a positive view of Judaism.

"The Oldest and Most Rare Hebrew Manuscript"

Against this background, António Ribeiro dos Santos was, it seems to us, in a position to be particularly receptive to a missive sent in 1804 from the Portuguese ambassador Francisco Maria de Brito, advocating the acquisition of "the oldest and most rare Hebrew manuscript," then being offered for sale at the Hague. Ribeiro dos Santos, in turn, obtained royal patronage to support the purchase of the manuscript.

Detail of folio 304r, with Jonah and the Whale, from the Cervera Bible, illuminated by Joseph the Frenchman, Spain, 1299–1300. Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisbon (BNP, IL.72)

As the images seen at the Metropolitan Museum this winter and the details illustrated here attest, the ambassador's enthusiasm was more than warranted. At the same time, both the ambassador's and the librarian's enthusiasm for the book may also be a reflection of a new era, for around 1800 Portugal decided to invite Jews back into the country as part of an effort to bolster the country's economy. But against the backdrop of the library's other early acquisitions, it seems more simply a reflection of a "catholic" (in the literal sense, meaning "universal") interest in learning. In that regard, it is worth noting that in 1805, the year after the purchase of the illuminated Hebrew Bible, Ribeiro dos Santos arranged for the National Library to purchase a Gutenberg Bible.

The images of the Cervera Bible, a recognized National Treasure of Portugal, are now available online, a development that Ribeiro dos Santos would surely have approved.

Detail of folio 147r (left) and folio 318v (right)

Further Reading

Domingos, Manuela D. Subsídios para a história da Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, 1995

Do Terreiro do Paço ao Campo Grande: 200 anos da Biblioteca Nacional, (exh. cat.), Lisbon, 1997

Libório, Fátima. Guia da Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, 1996

Pereira, José Esteves. O pensamento politico em Portugal no século XVIII: António Ribeiro dos Santos, Lisbon, 1983

Prato, Jeonathan. "Ribeiro dos Santos, António," Encyclopaedia Judaica, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, eds., 2nd ed., Detroit, 2007, vol. 17, 280–281

The Museum Library, authorized by the Museum's 1870 charter and formally established in 1880, is one of the world's great collections of art historical research materials. However, thousands of printed books in the Library and other departments of the Museum are deteriorating rapidly through heavy use, acidic paper, or both. In some cases, important information has already been lost.

Over the past two years the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art has established a digitization program, with the dual goals of preserving these original printed materials and expanding access to their content. This post inaugurates a series of Now at the Met entries in which we'll highlight some of the interesting and valuable items we've decided to digitize.

Catalogue of engravings, etchings and mezzotints, belonging to James L. Claghorn of Philadelphia, and lent by him for exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 128 West 14th Street, New York, March, 1874 (Detail of page 5). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1874. 7 pages, 25 cm. Thomas J. Watson Library (NE57 .C6 1874)

Illustrated above is a page from an 1874 print exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, and it's clear that we're close to losing forever some of the crucial details like artists' names and the titles of their works. Materials like these are historically important and frequently consulted, but will not be able to physically withstand much further use. If we only have a few turns through a physical object before it irreparably disintegrates, we want to make sure that one of those uses is for the scanner so we can preserve as much of the item and its information as possible.

A Library staff member scanning eighteenth-century fashion plates on the Zeutschel book scanner

Our process comprises three basic stages. We select the books and collections to be digitized; typically we look for items that are unique or rare, in the public domain, and not accessible elsewhere in digitized form. Next, we scan the items here in the library on our high-quality Zeutschel book scanner, illustrated above, or we send them to an outside vendor for scanning. Finally, we provide access to the digitized files using a software package that includes a public website and the option to index the full text of our items, thereby making vast amounts of previously unavailable content searchable.

We believe it is both important and in line with the Library's and the Museum's missions to digitize as many of the Museum's earliest and most ephemeral publications as possible.

To date, thanks to a dedicated group of interns, we have digitized more than 250 early Museum publications using our Zeutschel scanner. Most of these items relate to the Museum's collections and exhibitions, but we have also scanned publications on topics ranging from collection development and Museum policies to lecture programs to early versions of the constitution and by-laws.

Catalogue of the New York Centennial Loan Exhibition of Paintings, selected from the private art galleries, 1876 (Detail of cover). New York, 1876. 23 pages, 23 cm. Thomas J. Watson Library (N610.A53 M48 1870–76)

Shown above is a catalogue from the 1876 Centennial Loan Exhibition of Paintings. This exhibition, one of many celebratory events held throughout New York City and the country during that year, gathered together paintings and watercolors from preeminent galleries and private collectors in the area. According to the exhibition's organizers, the quality of the art in this exhibition had "never been surpassed on this continent."1

This digital collection of early Metropolitan Museum of Art publications will undoubtedly grow much larger as we identify more material; as of this writing, more than one hundred publications dating between 1870 and 1905 are in the final stages of scanning and will be available online soon. We are also working with Museum Archives to identify and include additional Museum publications not held by Watson Library. One of our ultimate goals is to compile the "digital library of record" for early Metropolitan Museum of Art publications.

The Thomas J. Watson Library has already digitized more than three thousand items both independently and in collaboration with Metropolitan Museum of Art curatorial departments as well as other art museum libraries and galleries. Together, these items represent a wealth of content for researchers to explore in order to further their knowledge of art history, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and its collections.

Related Link
Explore The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries' digital collections: http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm

[1] Catalogue of the New York Centennial Loan Exhibition of Paintings, selected from the private art galleries, 1876 (New York: s.n., 1876), Introduction.

Islamic art, architecture, and cultural traditions are closely related to other artistic movements around the world. In conjunction with the opening of the new Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, which house works from the Met's Department of Islamic Art, I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight related objects from the Museum's other curatorial departments.

At the beginning of 2011 we embarked on a project called Connections, a Web feature that explored the collections through themes that were personal to Met staff.

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Throughout 2011, our global audience has helped bring new energy to the Met. It's an exciting time for the Museum, marked by outstanding scholarship and incredible new ways to access and explore our collections. This short video captures some of my thoughts about this moment and the tremendous potential the Met's future holds. It comes with my thanks for your continued interest and support.

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Have you ever seen a work of art—on a poster, in a book, on a billboard, or even in one of the Met's galleries—and simply had to know more about it? Now you can. I'm pleased to announce a new collaboration with Google that lets you take a picture of a work of art with your mobile device and link straight to more information on metmuseum.org. This is yet another milestone in our effort to provide global access to our collections.

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«Sixty-five years ago today, on December 13, 1946, The Costume Institute's first exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum opened to the public.

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«In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, the Museum mounted a small exhibition, The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education. On September 11, 2011, Museum visitors from all walks of life participated in various special events at the Museum: a lecture by artist Faith Ringgold—who designed the quilt with New York City youth—poetry readings, and a memorial concert.

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«Today we launch a new section of the Met's website: The Met Around the World. The work of the Metropolitan Museum reflects the global scope of its collections and extends across the world through a variety of initiatives and programs including exhibitions, excavations, fellowships, professional exchanges, conservation projects, and traveling works of art. All these activities are now consolidated here to allow you to search them by location or category.

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«Armor made from steel plates that covered almost the entire body was developed around the late fourteenth century in Northern Italy, and spread north of the Alps soon after. Most early examples were plain, but by the middle of the fifteenth century armorers began to emboss surfaces with ridges and grooves and add gilt copper-alloy applications, transferring current tastes in civilian fashion to create sumptuous garments of steel. The turn of the sixteenth century saw the first elements of armor embellished with etching, a technique that dominated the decor until the end of armor as an art form, in the middle of the seventeenth century.

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«One hundred and twenty-five years ago today, on November 15, 1886, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Board of Trustees officially approved the establishment of the institution's first curatorial departments—the Department of Paintings, Department of Sculpture, and Department of Casts.

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«Caricatures and satires are generally created to comment on specific events or moments in history. The Headache, Enrique Chagoya's print of President Obama, for example, reminds us of the strident debates that took place more than a year ago about changes to the U.S. healthcare system. Chagoya based his image on a nineteenth-century print by George Cruikshank entitled The Head Ache that illustrates a man attacked by hammering and drilling demons who are the source of his woes.

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«When I joined the Metropolitan's Exhibitions Office, I could not have imagined the immensity of the work that goes into the exhibitions program. It can take up to five years for an exhibition to turn from a proposal into an installation and involve hundreds of workers across the Museum. In this post, I hope to answer the questions about the exhibitions process that I always had while roaming the galleries as a visitor.

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Today is a landmark day for the Metropolitan Museum as we celebrate the new Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, a spectacular achievement for the Museum and its Islamic Art Department.

These fifteen new galleries now trace the full course of Islamic civilization, over a span of fourteen centuries, from the Middle East to North Africa, Europe, and Central and South Asia. This geographic emphasis signals the revised perspective we have on this important collection, recognizing that the monumentality of Islam did not create a single, monolithic artistic expression, but instead connected a vast cultural expanse through centuries of change and influence.

I recall Director Emeritus Philippe de Montebello's words at the 2007 opening of the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court and Roman Galleries, citing it as a defining moment in the life of the Met, after which the Museum would never quite be the same again. I would assert that today is another such moment—one perhaps all the more defining because of the global circumstances that surround this occasion, as the situation in the Middle East continues to shift and evolve in the wake of the Arab Spring.

We must recognize that we live in a nation where a widespread consciousness about the Islamic world really did not exist until ten years ago, and that awareness came at one of the darkest hours in American history. It is our job—and the great achievement of these galleries—to educate our audience about the depths and magnificence of the Islamic tradition, to allow the richness of fourteen centuries to be understood not solely through the narrow lens of contemporary politics, but with the broader perspective of history and through the evidence of a remarkable artistic heritage. 

I am proud today to say that my colleagues have done just that; these new spaces will enrich the world view of every visitor who encounters them. This capacity to reach beyond one's own visual memory and position oneself in a world much greater than the confines of nationality or geography is why the Metropolitan Museum was established. Over 140 years ago, the founders of the Met looked beyond the limits of our city and our nation and built an encyclopedic museum that would position America within the world. These galleries are the legacy of that ambition and a triumph for all who worked to see them realized so beautifully.

«One of several new Met books that will accompany the November 1 reopening of the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, this month's featured publication will be the first English-language book devoted to the extraordinary silver jewelry of the nomadic Turkmen people of Central Asia.

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Humor and museums are not often linked. We can be informative, inspiring, even entertaining. But funny? Perhaps not as often as we should be. Our new exhibition changes all that. In Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine we travel through five centuries of outrageous imagery exploring eating, drinking, gambling, fashion, politics, and a whole of range of people—some famous, some forgotten. In this video, I talk to curators Nadine Orenstein and Constance McPhee about the many amusements to be found in this remarkable show:

«Since becoming Director, I have stressed two priorities: scholarship and accessibility. Our new website, which launched today, certainly embodies both of these aims, featuring complete listings of the Museum's catalogued collections, an interactive map—with descriptions of every gallery in the Main Building and at The Cloisters—suggested itineraries to help you plan your visit, special content for Members, and much more. Of course, favorite sections still remain, like the constantly evolving Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History and Connections, which takes us on personal journeys through the collection.

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«I am just back from Berlin, where my colleagues and I participated in the opening celebrations for a beautiful exhibition of fifteenth-century Renaissance portraits from Italy at the Bode-Museum. The show is the result of a remarkable four-year collaboration between the Met's curators and their German counterparts and represents the sort of international exchange that is the core of the Met's mission as a global resource for scholarship. The exhibition will be on view at the Bode-Museum until November 20 and at the Met from December 21, 2011, to March 18, 2012.

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«Suzuki Kiitsu's Morning Glories is the signature work of art in the exhibition A Sensitivity to the Seasons: Summer and Autumn in Japanese Art, open through October 23. Assistant Curator Sinéad Kehoe discussed this splendid work with me.

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«This week, a monumental statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat II (ca. 1919–1885 B.C.) was installed in the Met’s Great Hall. It is a special loan from the collection of the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

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«At the Met, we're always eager to hear from our online community through our various social media channels. Whether it's a comment about the Featured Artwork of the Day on our Facebook page, a question posed on Twitter, or a photograph posted to our Flickr group pool, our online visitors' responses are thoughtful and varied, and we enjoy reading and responding to them. Recently, the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty provided the Museum with an opportunity to hear from our online community in a new way; on a special McQueen page, we invited visitors to answer the question "What made you realize that fashion is an art form?" Not surprisingly, we received a wonderful range of responses, and we're excited to share them with you.

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«The recent news about this year's record attendance of over 5.6 million people marks an exciting moment in the Met's history; it is great to know that so many people are enjoying the Museum. But the Met experience need not be defined by crowds. To the contrary, I am struck every day by the intimate experiences that can be found within our galleries.

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«As the J. Clawson Mills Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for 2010–11, my research has focused on the artistic community in the city of Utrecht during the seventeenth-century "Golden Age" of Dutch painting. Through close examination of this network of artists, I have explored Utrecht's role in the magnificent flourishing of the arts that occurred at this time in the Netherlands, despite the civil discord caused by the Dutch fight for independence from Spain. This circle of artists used several different avenues—including displays of camaraderie, strong professional organizations, an emphasis on artists' education, and joint artistic endeavors—to keep their community strong even as Utrecht buckled under the political, religious, and social strain of war.

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«Established in 1951, the Fellowship Program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is flourishing, with scholars taking up residence in all corners of the building—from the curatorial departments, conservation labs, libraries, and study rooms to the Education Department, gallery spaces, offices, and archives.

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«Ninety years ago today, on July 15, 1921, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its first solo exhibition of works by a female artist. The Children's World: Drawings by Florence Wyman Ivins, a group of watercolor drawings, woodcuts, and black-and-white drawings, was shown in the Education Department through November 19, 1921.

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«The current exhibition Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents reflects the dynamic intersection of two areas of the Museum's permanent collections—it is presented in the spacious passageway between the galleries of modern art and those dedicated to the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

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«The current exhibition Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe opens a window on one of the most popular art forms of the Rococo and Enlightenment eras. These works slipped from public notice long ago as they became associated with the artificiality of the ancien régime, and in modern times because their fragility discouraged exhibition and travel. This is the first exhibition of such portraits in at least seventy-five years. It presents a sense of the great numbers of artists who practiced in this once popular medium, the many different styles in which they worked, and the materials and techniques they employed.

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«One hundred and ten years ago this weekend, on July 2, 1901, American locomotive magnate and Metropolitan Museum of Art benefactor Jacob S. Rogers died. Unbeknownst to the Museum's staff and Trustees at the time, Rogers's death would result in the largest and most significant financial contribution to the institution until that time, and among the most important in its history.

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«Alexander McQueen had a unique understanding of the dramatic potential of tailoring, as well as of how the actual fabric of a garment is intrinsic both to its shape and historical, cultural, and psychological impact. In the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective of the late designer's work, we can appreciate the designer's superb craftsmanship up close; from shells to feathers, from traditional embroidery to cutting-edge digital print, we see the dazzling array of textile techniques that cemented his reputation as the most inventive fashion designer of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

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«In conjunction with the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a competition for fashion design graduate students this spring. The winner was announced at the Met's McQueen for a Night event on May 20; Paula Cheng, a student at Parsons The New School for Design, won the contest and received an internship at Alexander McQueen, a yearlong Metropolitan Museum Membership, and several other exhibition-related prizes.

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On February 25, the Museum launched "Get Closer," a photography contest in which we invited visitors to share details from works of art in our collection that have intrigued or inspired them. Hundreds of visitors submitted photographs taken throughout the Main Building and The Cloisters museum and gardens, the branch of the Museum located in Northern Manhattan. Contributors described such details as the powerful eyes of an African mask, the sensual quality of a lemon peel in a Dutch still life, and the iridescence of a Tiffany vase. We extend our thanks to all of the contest participants for their inspired contributions.

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«As our presentation of the Washington Haggadah enters its final month, we turn not to the end of the book but to the first page of the manuscript. In both word and image, this page proclaims the privilege of preparing for Passover.

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The "Mask of Agamemnon" is one of the most famous gold artifacts from the Greek Bronze Age. Found at Mycenae in 1876 by the distinguished archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, it was one of several gold funeral masks found laid over the faces of the dead buried in the shaft graves of a royal cemetery. The most detailed and stylistically distinct mask came to be known as the Mask of Agamemnon, named after the famous king of ancient Mycenae whose triumphs and tribulations are celebrated in Homer's epic poems and in the tragic plays of Euripides. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s replica of this mask molded by Emile Gilliéron père (manufactured and sold by the Würtemberg Electroplate Company) is an example of an electroformed reproduction, also commonly known as an electrotype—or by the historic term, "galvanoplastic"—reproduction.

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At the recent American Association of Museums annual conference, the Metropolitan Museum won two awards for online projects.

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One hundred and twenty years ago today, on May 31, 1891, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened to the public on a Sunday for the first time in its history.

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Many of the works on paper currently on view in Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son required conservation treatment to address a variety of structural and aesthetic problems. The dedicated effort over the past two years to address the conservation of these objects and to look more closely at their method of production reflects a reconsideration of their role in the Museum and in the history of art itself.

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This month, the Museum launched its first iPad app interactive e-publication for the exhibition Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.

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In the second half of the nineteenth century, archaeologists began to focus on understanding prehistoric Greece and its extraordinary flowering during the Greek Bronze Age (about 3000–1050 B.C.). Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of wealthy tombs at Mycenae in 1876 brought to life the Heroic Age immortalized in the epic poetry of Homer, in which King Agamemnon’s palace was described as "rich in gold." Twenty-four years after Schliemann's find, the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began excavations at Knossos, on the island of Crete, that would yield a vast complex of buildings belonging to a sophisticated prehistoric culture, which he dubbed Minoan after the legendary King Minos. Evans hired a Swiss artist, Emile Gilliéron (1850–1924) and later his son, Emile (1885–1939), as chief fresco restorers at Knossos, where they worked for more than thirty years. The Gilliérons also established a thriving business catering to the popular demand for reproductions of antiquities from the newly identified Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. The current exhibition Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son focuses on the colorful and carefully crafted reproductions made by the Gilliérons, which were disseminated around the world and provided a vivid impression of the new finds that inspired a generation of writers, intellectuals and artists, from James Joyce and Sigmund Freud to Pablo Picasso. While there have been previous exhibitions in Europe devoted to the Gilliérons' work, this is the first such presentation in North America.

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