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African Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

The Met's collection of works by artists from across sub-Saharan Africa comprises nearly 3,000 works spanning two millennia, several hundred distinct cultures, and 39 contemporary nation states.

The Charles Engelhard Court in The American Wing at The Met. 

Ever since its establishment in 1870 the Museum has acquired important examples of American Art. A separate \"American Wing\" building to display the domestic arts of the 17th&ndash;early 19th centuries opened in 1924; paintings galleries and an enclosed sculpture court were added in 1980.

Ancient American Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

The Met's collection of ancient American art, situated in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, comprises more than 6,000 works of art representing almost 5,000 years of history from North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean.

Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries at The Met. 

The Museum's collection of ancient Near Eastern art includes more than 7,000 works ranging in date from the 8th millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the time of the Arab conquests of the 7th century A.D. Objects come from a vast region centered in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and extending north to the Caucasus and the Eurasian steppes and south to the Arabian peninsula. To the west the region includes Anatolia, Syria, and the Levant, bordered by the Mediterranean; to the east, it extends through Iran and western Central Asia, with connections as far as the Indus River Valley.

Galleries in the Arms and Armor area of The Met. 

Arms and armor have been a vital part of virtually all cultures for thousands of years, pivotal not only in conquest and defense, but also in court pageantry and ceremonial events. Throughout time the best armor and weapons have represented the highest artistic and technical capabilities of the society and period in which they were made, forming a unique aspect of both art history and material culture.

Astor Court in the Asian Art galleries at The Met

The collection of Asian art at The Met&mdash;more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 21st century&mdash;is one of the largest and is the most comprehensive in the West. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Alexander McQueen exhibition in The Costume Institute galleries. 

The Costume Institute's collection of more than 35,000 costumes and accessories represents five continents and seven centuries of fashionable dress, regional costumes, and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Drawings and Prints galleries at The Met.

The Department's vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1,400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department&rsquo;s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

The Temple of Dendur in the Egyptian Art galleries. 

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 26,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from the Paleolithic to the Roman period (ca. 300,000 B.C.&ndash;A.D. 4th century). More than half of the collection is derived from the Museum's 35 years of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing Western interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Galleries in the European Paintings wing at The Met. 

The Met's world-famed collection of European paintings encompasses works of art from the 13th through the 19th centuries&mdash;from Giotto to Gauguin. Most, though not all, are displayed in the galleries of the Department of European Paintings. Others works of art can be found in the Lehman Collection, the Linsky Collection, The Met Cloisters, and in various period rooms. Apart from its many individual masterpieces by artists as diverse as Jan van Eyck, Caravaggio, and Seurat, the Museum possesses the most extensive collection of 17th-century Dutch art in the western hemisphere, including outstanding works by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Its holdings of El Greco and Goya are the finest outside of Spain, while the survey it offers of French painting between neo-Classicism and post-Impressionism is second only to Paris, with extensive holdings of the work of Corot, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Degas, C&eacute;zanne, and Van Gogh.

Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts galleries. 

The 50,000 objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early 15th through the early 20th century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Leon Levy and Shelby White Court in the Greek and Roman Art galleries. 

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 17,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: much of Asia Minor on the periphery of Greece was settled by Greeks; Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized in the course of its long history; and Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the pre-Greek art of Greece and the pre-Roman art of Italy, notably of the Etruscans.

Damascus Room in the Islamic Art galleries at The Met. 

The Met's collection of Islamic art ranges in date from the seventh to the twenty-first century. Its more than 15,000 objects reflect the great diversity and range of the cultural traditions of the Islamic world, with works from as far westward as Spain and Morocco and as far eastward as Central Asia and Indonesia. Comprised of both religious and secular objects, the collection reveals the mutual influence of artistic practices such as calligraphy and the exchange of motifs such as vegetal ornament (the arabesque), geometric patterning, and figuration in both realms.

Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Paintings galleries in The Robert Lehman Collection

The Robert Lehman Collection is one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Robert Lehman's bequest to The Met, a collection of extraordinary quality and breadth acquired over the course of 60 years, is a remarkable example of 20th-century American collecting. Spanning 700 years of western European art, from the 14th to the 20th centuries, the 2,600 works include paintings, drawings, manuscript illumination, sculpture, glass, textiles, antique frames, maiolica, enamels, and precious jeweled objects.

Thomas J. Watson Library is the central research library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its collection of books and periodicals relating to the history of art is one of the most comprehensive in the world. The primary mission of the library is to support the research activities of the Museum staff; in addition, it welcomes a broad range of students and researchers college age and above.

Medieval Sculpture Hall in the Medieval Art and The Cloisters galleries. 

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the 4th century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early 16th century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Galleries in the Modern and Contemporary Art Wing at The Met. 

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Use our <a href=\"https://www.metmuseum.org/audio-guide?utm_source=in-museum&amp;utm_medium=maps-TEST \">Audio Guide</a> in the galleries to learn more about the collection.</p>\n<p>The Modern and Contemporary Art department is devoted to the study, collection and exhibition of art from 1890 to the present. An era marked by seismic cultural, social and political shifts across the globe, artistic responses to these changes have shaped multiple modernities and diverse contemporary practices. The department seeks to research and present the interconnected and richly variegated narratives and experiences that inform the art of this period from around the world. Historically focused on the art of Western Europe and North America, since 2012. the department has greatly expanded and diversified its collection of modern and contemporary art, especially through works by women and artists of color, with particular emphasis on acquisitions from Latin America, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. Today, its collections span a range of media, including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, design, decorative arts, and time-based media. The department presents rotating selections from its dynamic holdings in the Modern and Contemporary galleries of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing.

Thomas Appleton organ in the Musical Instruments galleries.

The Museum's collection of musical instruments includes approximately 5,000 examples from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from about 300 B.C. to the present. It illustrates the development of musical instruments from all cultures and eras. Selected for their technical and social importance as well as for their tonal and visual beauty, the instruments may be understood in a number of ways: as art objects, as ethnographic record, and as documents of the history of music and performance.

Oceanic Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

The expansive region of Oceania covers over a third of the Earth's surface and is home to some 1,800 different cultures and a kaleidoscopic range of artistic traditions. The Met's collection of Oceanic art comprises over 2,800 works that present the rich history of creative expression and innovation that is emblematic of the Pacific islands.

Established as an independent curatorial department in 1992, The Met's Department of Photographs houses a collection of more than 75,000 works spanning the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s to the present. Among the treasures from the early years of the medium are a rare album of photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot made just months after he presented his invention to the public; a large collection of portrait daguerreotypes by the Boston firm of Southworth and Hawes; landscape photographs of the American West by Timothy O'Sullivan and Carleton Watkins; and fine examples of French photography from the 1850s by Edouard Baldus, Charles N&egrave;gre, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, and others.

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