Gifts of Art: The Met's 150th Anniversary

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduction by Max Hollein
2020
208 pages
157 illustrations
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In honor of the institution’s 150th year, this publication celebrates the 203 collectors who committed more than 2,500 works of art to The Met for the sesquicentennial. These meaningful additions change the ways in which we think about the Museum’s holdings and deepen the stories The Met can tell about all the works in the collection.

Highlights featured in this volume include an imposing stone head from an Egyptian sarcophagus; an opulent horse armor commissioned by King Philip IV of Spain; a Tibetan war mask; an early American daguerreotype; Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s enigmatic watercolor; an early twentieth-century Japanese bamboo shrine cabinet; poignant photographs made by Robert Frank for his iconic series The Americans; the Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera’s 1949 tondo Iberic; Steve Miller’s 1961 Gibson guitar; important works by Georg Baselitz; art from the Iranian Saqqakhana school; the vibrant bark painting of Aboriginal Australian artist Nonggirrnga Marawili; and recent creations by artists such as Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Robert Gober, and Wangechi Mutu.

Met Art in Publication

Monumental Head of a Foreigner, Limestone
ca. 1295–1070 B.C.
Head of a Woman, Limestone, paint
ca. 1250–1070 B.C.
Kneeling Bearded Figure, Serpentine, pigment (probably cinnabar), Olmec
900–400 BCE
Marble statue of a panther, Marble, Greek
ca. 323–31 BC
Marble funerary altar, marble, Roman
1st half of 1st century CE
Helmet (<i>Spangenhelm</i>), Iron, copper alloy, gold, Byzantine
6th century
Tripod plate with mythological scene, Ceramic with red, cream, and black slip, Maya
7th–8th century
Tapestry Tunic, Camelid wool, Wari
7th–9th century
King Songten Gampo as the incarnate Avalokiteshvara, Painting on silk, Tibet
10th–11th century
Four Poems from the Sekido Version of the Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern (Sekido-bon Kokin wakashū) 
, Fujiwara no Yukinari 藤原行成  Japanese, Two pages from a booklet mounted as hanging scroll; ink on dyed paper, Japan
Fujiwara no Yukinari 藤原行成
mid- to late 11th century
Hevajra and Nairātmyā, Brass with silver and pigment, Tibet
late 12th century
Box with Metal Mounts, Glass, greenish color; mold-blown, wheel-cut decoration, metal mounts
ca. 11th century
Coffret with the Legend of Guilhem, count of Toulouse, Walnut, painted, iron mounts, South French
ca. 1200–1225
Spider Monkey with Wind God Regalia, Stone, Aztec
13th–16th century
War Mask, Iron, gold, copper alloy, Tibetan
14th–16th century
Bon Deity Trowo Tsochog Khagying, Distemper, ink, and gold on cloth, Tibet
15th century
Seated woman representing Astrology, Giambologna  Netherlandish, Red wax, Italian
Giambologna
mid-1570s
Tritons Abducting Nereids, Luca Cambiaso  Italian, Pen and dark brown ink, brush and grayish brown wash, over black chalk on three glued sheets of paper. The original paper surface is glued onto the mount; verso not visible.
Luca Cambiaso
1547–85
Tethered Hawks, Soga Chokuan  Japanese, Twelve paintings mounted as a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on paper, Japan
Soga Chokuan
before 1606
The Dormition of the Virgin, Carlo Saraceni  Italian, Oil on canvas
Carlo Saraceni
ca. 1612
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Bantz, Jennifer, Kayla Elam, Anne Blood Mann, and Briana Parker, eds. 2020. Gifts of Art: The Met’s 150th Anniversary. New York, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.