An Audio Guide, floor plan, and guided gallery tours are among the visitor amenities available to Mandarin speakers at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and finest art museums in the world. Its vast holdings include more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. Founded in 1870, it is located in New York City's Central Park, along Fifth Avenue (from 80th to 84th streets). The Metropolitan's two million square feet house what is, in fact, a museum of museums; several of its collections are among the best in the world and would be major independent museums almost anywhere else.
On Arrival
Visitors arriving at the Metropolitan Museum may pick up, at no charge, a floor plan of the galleries in Mandarin. These floor plans are available at the Information Desk in the Museum's Great Hall, which is located inside the main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. Mandarin speakers are also stationed at the Information Desk to provide additional assistance to visitors. The Metropolitan Museum's website also offers information in Mandarin at http://www.metmuseum.org/visitor/vi_index_chinese.htm.
Audio Guide
"The Director's Selections" Audio Guide program – highlighting 58 masterpieces chosen by Director Philippe de Montebello from across the Museum's encyclopedic collection – is available in Mandarin to visitors. The 58 magnificent works of art represent the scope of human creativity and artistic talent over time and across the globe.
The lightweight, palm-sized MP3 players are easy to operate, and have random-access programming that allows visitors to design their own tours in terms of length and sequence. Players can be rented for up to an entire day for $7 ($6 for members, $5 for children under the age of 12) in the Great Hall of the Museum.
In addition to Mandarin, the Director's Selections Audio Guide is also offered in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.
The Audio Guide is produced in collaboration with Antenna Audio, the leading provider of audio programming for museums and historic sites around the world.
The Audio Guide program at the Metropolitan Museum is sponsored by Bloomberg.
Guided Tours
On most Fridays at 2:00 p.m., visitors can explore some of the highlights of the collection with a Mandarin-speaking guide. This public tour lasts approximately one hour and is free with Museum admission. Visitors should confirm the tour schedule by visiting the Museum's online calendar at www.metmuseum.org/calendar.
The Museum also offers customized tours in Mandarin to groups by appointment. More information about these private group tours is available from the Visitor Services Department at 212-650-3711 or online at www.metmuseum.org/visitor/groups.
Asian Art at the Met
The Metropolitan Museum has been collecting Asian art since the late 19th century, and its holdings of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and South and Southeast Asian art are now the most comprehensive in the West. The Museum is renowned for its exceptional collection of Chinese paintings and calligraphy, including works in both the scholarly and courtly traditions from the eighth through the 18th century.
Visitors to the Chinese painting galleries will find captions for the works of art in both English and Mandarin.
A unique feature of the Asian art galleries is the Astor Court, modeled on a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) scholar's courtyard in the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets in Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai famous for its garden architecture. The materials needed for construction were gathered and manufactured in China, and the court was built almost entirely by Chinese craftsmen. A gift from the Vincent Astor Foundation, the Court represents a significant cultural exchange between the United States and The People's Republic of China.
Other special features among the offerings of Chinese art at the Metropolitan include: The Charlotte C. Weber Galleries for the Arts of Ancient China, displaying the Museum's holdings of archaic bronzes and jades, ceramics, and metalwork from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500-2000 B.C.) to the Tang Dynasty (618-907); monumental Chinese stone sculptures from the fifth through the eighth century; rare Buddhist images from the Tang to the Ming dynasty; and The Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for Decorative Arts, which present magnificent Chinese jades, lacquers, metalwork, textiles, and other objects from the 12th through the 19th century.
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February 26, 2008
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