The Metropolitan Museum of Art
 Address:1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York United States Contact Info: 212-570-3828 communications@metmuseum.org Go to Museum Site Map to Museum 
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Map to Museum
Information
Opening Hours*
Friday: 9:30 a.m.–9:00 p.m.
Saturday: 9:30 a.m.–9:00 p.m.
Sunday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Monday Closed**
Tuesday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Thursday: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
*Galleries are cleared at 5:15 p.m., Sunday–Thursday, and 8:45 p.m., Friday and Saturday
Admissions
Includes Museum galleries, all special exhibitions, guided tours, gallery talks, family programs, and same-day visit to The Cloisters
Suggested
Adult $20
Senior (65 and older) $15
Student $10
Members Free
Children (under 12 with adult) Free
To help cover the cost of special exhibitions, for which there is no additional charge or special ticketing, we ask that you please pay the full suggested amount.
The Museum participates in several programs that allow students free admission to the Museum. All New York City public school students may visit the Museum for free, along with students from Bard College, Barnard College, Columbia University and Institute of Fine Arts. Check with your school administrator to see if your student I.D. allows free admission.
Photograph: Flickr by Premshree Pillai.
Description
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens – businessmen and financiers as well as leading arists and thinkers of the day – who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.
The Metropolitan's paintings collection also began in 1870, when three private European collections, 174 paintings in all, came to the Museum. A variety of excellent Dutch and Flemish paintings, including works by such artists as Hals and Van Dyck, was supplemented with works by such great European artists as Poussin, Tiepolo, and Guardi.
The collections continued to grow for the rest of the 19th century – upon the death of John Kensett, for example, 38 of his canvases came to the Museum. But it is the 20th century that has seen the Museum's rise to the position of one of the world's great art centers. Some highlights: a work by Renoir entered the Museum as early as 1907 (today the Museum has become one of the world's great repositories of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art)...in 1910 the Metropolitan was the first public institution to accept works of art by Matisse...by 1979 the Museum owned five of the fewer than 40 known Vermeers...the Department of Greek and Roman Art now oversees thousands of objects, including one of the finest collections in glass and silver in the world...The American Wing holds the most comprehensive collection of American art, sculpture, and decorative arts in the world...the Egyptian art collection is the finest outside Cairo...the Islamic art collection is without peer...and so on, through many of the 17 curatorial departments.
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