MetPublications

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 56 include an investigation into the politics that governed dispersal of a pair of Sèvres elephant-head vases during the French Revolution, a consideration of imagery used in a rare seventeenth-century Ethiopian prayer book, and a critique of the Museum’s early collecting of ancient art of the Americas.

This history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates its evolution into one of the world’s greatest museums and its vision for the future

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 54 include conservators’ discoveries of Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia’s workshop techniques; a new reading of lavishly dressed women on tile panels from 17th-century Iran; and John Singer Sargent’s decisive role in choosing his socialite sitters’ fashionable attire.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of works of art from antiquities to modern and contemporary material. Their preservation is a responsibility shared by the many individuals employed at the Museum who have direct contact with the collection on a daily basis. The Care and Handing of Art Objects—first published in the 1940s and continually updated—offers a guide to the best practices in handling and preserving works of art while on display, in storage, and in transit. It explains many of the fundamental principles of conservation that underlie these methods. One of the goals of the publication is to make the complexities of caring for a collection readily accessible by offering basic guidelines for the preservation of the diverse materials and art objects found in The Met. Each chapter of Part I addresses a different medium ranging from paintings on canvas, works on paper, and photographs to furniture, upholstery, and arms and armor. The sections provides an overview of the particular environmental, handling, and housing factors needed to prevent damage and ensure preservation of each material. Written by experts in the respective specialty, the text summarizes the field's most critical preservation issues, many of which are amplified by photographs. Part II succinctly describes factors that affect the collection as a whole. Among these concerns the book features current environmental standards for temperature, relative humidity, light exposure, storage, and art in transit. The text also addresses integrated pest management and emergency preparedness and response. Charts on storage and display conditions as well as factors contributing to deterioration provide an easy reference for readers. A glossary of conservation terms, principles, and housing materials helps to guide for those unfamiliar with the field. The Care and Handing of Art Objects draws on the knowledge of conservators, scientists, and curators from many different departments, along with that technicians and engineers whose expertise crosses boundaries of culture, chronology, medium, and condition. It is an invaluable resource for students, collectors, small museums, museum study programs, art dealers, and members of the public who want to enhance their understanding of how works of art are safeguarded and the role environment, handling, and materials play in making this possible.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 53 include an exquisite pair of 17th-century Chinese birthday gift portraits of an elderly couple, a hidden painting of a Rococo-inspired nude underneath Manet’s 1862 Mademoiselle V. . . . in the Costume of an Espada, and a new identification of the central figure in Daumier’s The Third-Class Carriage.

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum's collection. Highlights of volume 52 include a study of the intertwined relationship between two late masterpieces by Andrea del Sarto, new attributions for seven Roman drawings from the 16th and 17th centuries, and a reevaluation of Horace Pippin's painting The Lady of the Lake from the late 1930s.

Few things are more exciting than the rediscovery of a lost but storied work of art. This Bulletin examines Charles Le Brun’s spectacular Everhard Jabach (1618–1695) and His Family, a landmark of Western portraiture that was long thought destroyed—known only from photographs taken before World War II—when it was found hanging in an English country house, where it had languished for more than a century prior to its acquisition by The Met. The authors tease out the many secrets bound up in Le Brun’s canvas and its extraordinary sitter, who was one of the greatest art collectors of seventeenth-century Europe.