"There are tulips, roses, carnations, irises, hydrangea, and they form this sort of dense garden that weaves in and out of the paisley shapes."

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum's collection. Highlights of volume 59 include new discoveries with regard to unexpectedly playful facade sculptures on a 16th-century English merchant's house; a study of small devotional paintings on copper made in Mexico by Nicolás Enríquez for the private use of a Spanish merchant; and the rich story of an Ottoman prayer rug, the restoration of which was overseen by previously overlooked 20th-century tastemaker Robert-Sadia Pardo.

The world-renowned Senegalese singer carries the stories of the Sahel to The Met.

Administrator Christina Alphonso invites visitors to escape the summer heat with a visit to The Cloisters museum and gardens.

The visual arts of Oceania tell a wealth of dynamic stories about origins, ancestral power, performance, and initiation. This publication explores the deeply rooted connections between Austronesian-speaking peoples, whose ancestral homelands span Island Southeast Asia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the island archipelagoes of the northern and eastern Pacific. Unlike previous books, it foregrounds Indigenous perspectives, alongside multidisciplinary research in art history, ethnography, and archaeology, to provide an intimate look at Oceania, its art, and its culture. Stunning new photography highlights more than 130 magnificent objects, ranging from elaborately carved ancestral figures in ceremonial houses, towering slit drums, and dazzling turtle-shell masks to polished whale ivory breastplates. Underscoring the powerful interplay between the ocean and its islands, and the ongoing connection with spiritual and ancestral realms, Oceania: The Shape of Time presents an art-focused approach to life and culture while guiding readers through the artistic achievements of Islanders across millennia.

This spectacular album, which contains intimate nature studies, portraits of the royal family and various dignitaries, and fine examples of illuminated folios of calligraphy by renowned calligraphers, offers a glimpse into the courtly life and diverse interests of its patrons.

Jade, along with bronze, represents the highest achievement of Bronze Age material culture.

Composed in the tenth century by the poet Firdowsi, the Shah-nameh or Book of Kings is Iran's central literary work, a historical epic peopled with monarchs—some of inspiring goodness, others of unmatched wickedness—handsome paladins, beautiful maidens, malevolent witches, and treacherous demons. The particular manuscript of the Shah-nameh introduced here by Stuart Cary Welch, Curator of Indian and Islamic Painting at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, is the most sumptuous one ever produced. Containing scores of paintings where other sixteenth-century Shah-nameh manuscripts contain a dozen, the Houghton Shah-nameh (identified by the name of its owner, Arthur A. Houghton, Jr.) is thought to have been commissioned about 1522 by Shah Isma'il, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, as a present for his son, Prince Tahmasp. Court artists and craftsmen continued their work on the 759 folios for the better part of two decades; as a consequence, the book offers a fascinating mixture of artistic styles. The extraordinary quality of the paintings was known even in Shah Tahmasp's time. One commentator wrote then of Sultan Muhammad's page representing The court of Gayumars: "The boldest painters hung their heads in shame before it." While that superb image, reproduced here in color and gold, is called by Stuart Cary Welch "perhaps the greatest painting in Iranian art" others of the pages he has selected for color reproduction and special comment are clearly in the same area of merit. (A number of these 8 leaves, along with others not reproduced here, were presented to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Mr. Houghton in 1970). In addition to tutoring the reader in the elements of early Safavid painting and the differing personalities of the masters who contributed to Shah Tahmasp's book, Mr. Welch explains the action in each of the illustrated scenes. Pictorial "close-ups" for each scene permit one to savor their details, exquisite, charming, or astonishing. When A King's Book of Kings first appeared, in 1972, as part of the 2500th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Persian empire, reviewers called it "important and handsome" and "a delight, an education!' And so it is.

In addition to being a great work of literature, in fact, the poem can also be considered a successful example of “mirror for princes,” a popular genre in the medieval and early modern Islamic world intended for the education and edification of rulers.

Composer Shawn Okpebholo and Duke University professor Dr. Tsitsi Ella Jaji bring individual stories to life through song.