Between 1850 and 1950, when art collecting in France stalled due to the devastating effects of two world wars, revolution, and economic uncertainty, it accelerated internationally, gaining interest from foreign collectors. In this discussion, curators, scholars, and experts in provenance research consider the historical market for modern art as the root of the globalized art world of today.

Online Community Manager Taylor Newby highlights a selection of upcoming events featured in the Met Museum Presents Spring Ticket Sweepstakes.

Associate Curator Femke Speelberg recounts the interesting tale of a painting based on a cartoon by Michelangelo that was almost given away by raffle in 1735.

Explore the influence of Jack Whitten's practice on acclaimed artists.

Fifteen jewel-like miniature paintings—with enlarged details—and thirteen pages of exquisitely calligraphed poetry are reproduced here from a diminutive manuscript commissioned by Akbar the Great, the third Mughal emperor of India. The manuscript, which measures only 5 1/2 by 27/8 inches, was made in 1588, the thirty-third year of Akbar's reign, when the emperor was at the height of his power. The tiny paintings are the work of Akbar's court artists, many of whom were trained by Persian artists brought to India by Humayun, Akbar's father. A brilliant blend of Persian and Indian influences marks the work of these Mughal painters; their miniatures combine extreme delicacy of line with intense colors and complex compositions—some of which demonstrate the artists' understanding of the European concept of perspective. The various small paintings convey the whimsy, vigor, and lyrical quality of the poems they illustrate. The poems are by Auhaduddin Anvari, the greatest Persian panegyrist of the twelfth century. In her commentary on the poems and in her essay on Anvari's work and life, Annemarie Schimmel, the Museum's special consultant for Islamic art, offers insights into Anvari's complex and sometimes caustic works and gives new translations of many of the poems. Stuart Cary Welch, special consultant in charge of the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan, has written an engaging account of Akbar's life and times that includes a history of the Mughal dynasty and of the court ateliers where this delightful Divan was produced. This Divan of Anvari is in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and the Metropolitan is honored to collaborate with the Fogg in the publication of the present book. The publication has been generously supported by a grant from The Hagop Kevorkian Fund, New York.

"Cézanne to Van Gogh: The Collection of Doctor Gachet" was originally conceived as a Musée d'Orsay "dossier" exhibition organized around the Gachet family's gift to the French state and intended to acquaint the public with the personality of Dr. Gachet. It took a different turn, however, when two of the museum's long-standing partners, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, decided to participate in the project and thus give it international exposure. Since, with the exhibition of the two famous portraits by Van Gogh that were included in the centennial retrospective held in Amsterdam in 1990, virtually none of the works in the Gachet donation have ever before left France, this exhibition is not only an exciting event but also one of the unquestionable importance. A fascinating and multisided individual, Paul-Ferdinand Gachet (1828–1909) was a homeopathic physician, an amateur printmaker and painter, and the friend and patron of a cluster of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists—including Cézanne, Pissarro, Guillaumin, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh—whose talents he was among the first to recognize. The exhibition presents major examples of the artists' work; it also features copies made after them at the turn of the century by Dr. Gachet, by his son, and by other amateurs in their circle, as well as a trove of "souvenirs" (artist's palettes and still-life and household objects) that record Gachet's close relationships with pioneering nineteenth-century painters. This occasion also highlights the role of Paul Gachet fils (1873–1962), the doctor's son and namesake, who preserved his father's legacy by acting as biographer, as cataloguer and jealous guardian of the legendary collection, and, between 1949 and 1954, as munificent donor to the French state. At that time he expressed the desire, which was fully supported by the curators, to restrict loans to temporary exhibitions. However, he made it clear that those now responsible for the works would by free to judge if and when the merits of an exhibition warranted lending them. A half-century after the first gift in 1949 seems the right moment to pay homage both to Dr. Gachet and to the artists he loved.