The legends that grew up around him hold that both his conception and birth were miraculous.

For a variety of reasons it has been speculated that the heads were used in initiation rites, perhaps even worn.

This sculpture of the boy-king Tutankhamun is among the nearly sixty objects in the exhibition Tutankhamun's Funeral. I spoke with Dorothea Arnold, the Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman of the Department of Egyptian Art, about the significance and style of this work.

In this charming silent film, a drawing student’s daydream at The Met brings the ancient Greek myth of Perseus to life.

Intended to inspire the devout and provide a focus for religious practice, Buddhist artworks stand at the center of a great religious tradition that swept across Asia during the first millennia. How to Read Buddhist Art assembles fifty-four masterpieces from The Met collection to explore how images of the Buddha crossed linguistic and cultural barriers, and how they took on different (yet remarkably consistent) characteristics in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Himalayas, China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Works highlighted in this rich, concise overview include reliquaries, images of the Buddha that attempt to capture his transcendence, diverse bodhisattvas who protect and help the devout on their personal path, and representations of important teachers. The book offers the essential iconographic frameworks needed to understand Buddhist art and practice, helping the reader to appreciate how artists gave form to subtle aspects of the teachings, especially in the sublime expression of the Buddha himself.

Former High School Intern Fahim imagines a world where mummies can be brought back to life using a Book of the Dead.

Sketches obscured beneath this portrait reveals aspects of the artist’s creative process.

A gem of analog animation, George Griffin’s _Head_ offers a delightfully snarky and clever self-portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man, undone by his own cartoon surrogate.

The Chinese way of appreciating a painting is often expressed by the words du hua, "to read a painting." How does one do that? Because art is a visual language, words alone cannot adequately convey its expressive dimension. How to Read Chinese Paintings seeks to visually analyze thirty-six paintings and calligraphies from the encyclopedic collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to elucidate what makes each a masterpiece. Maxwell K. Hearn's elegantly erudite yet readable text discusses each work in depth, considering multiple layers of meaning. Style, technique, symbolism, past traditions, historical events, and the artist's personal circumstances all come into play. Spanning more than a thousand years, from the eighth through the seventeenth century, the subjects represented are particularly wide-ranging: landscapes, flowers, birds, figures, religious subjects, and calligraphies. All illuminate the main goal of every Chinese artist: to capture not only the outer appearance of a subject but also its inner essence. Numerous large color details, accompanied by informative captions, allow the reader to delve further into the most significant aspects of each work. Together the text and illustrations gradually reveal many of the major themes and characteristics of Chinese painting. To "read" these works is to enter a dialogue with the past. Slowly perusing a scroll or album, one shares an intimate experience that has been repeated over the centuries. And it is through such readings that meaning is gradually revealed.