Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, founded in 1870. The Metropolitan Museum is the foremost repository of art in the United States. It opened in 1880 on its present site on Central Park facing Fifth Ave. The building was designed by Calvert Vaux and J. W. Mould and expanded by Richard Morris Hunt and by McKim, Mead, and White during the early 1900s. It is owned by the city, which contributes a certain sum yearly for upkeep, but otherwise the museum is supported by private endowment and income from memberships and admission fees that are requested as voluntary contributions. The museum's most outstanding collections include European paintings and sculpture of the Renaissance, baroque, and modern periods; pastels; watercolors; miniatures; and a vast number of drawings and graphic art works. The Egyptian wing has the mastaba of Perneb (erected c.2460 B.C.), rebuilt here in its original form. Much of the extensive and remarkable medieval art collection is housed in the Cloisters, a separate building in northern Manhattan erected from various medieval components in 1938. The collection of armor is outstanding. The museum houses a great number of works of art from the Middle East and Asia in many media. The American collection shows the development of painting, sculpture, furniture and the decorative arts from the colonial period through the 20th cent., with many objects arranged in period settings. The print collection includes woodcuts and engravings, dating from the 15th cent., and etchings and lithographs. The Costume Institute provides a practical source of inspiration and reference for designers through its collection of thousands of authentic costumes and accessories, international in scope and covering four centuries. The museum houses an important exhibition of antique and primitive musical instruments. Its hundreds of examples of Greek pottery and its Greek and Roman sculptures are among the finest such collections in the world. In the early 1970s the museum acquired the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, the Michael C. Rockefeller collection of primitive art, and the extensive Robert Lehman collection of European art. Additional exhibition space became available (1987) with the opening of the Lila Acheson Wallace wing for 20th cent. art, designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. In 1980 the museum acquired the André Meyer collection of 19th cent. European art. Walter Annenberg has announced his bequest of his private collection to the museum.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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