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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Facts

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Facts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also referred to as The Met, is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York City. It was founded in 1870 by a group of Americans in France who wished to bring art to America. The founders were financiers, businessmen, and artists and visionaries. The Met opened in 1872 at 681 Fifth Avenue. The museum moved to the Douglas Mansion briefly, before being moved to its permanent and present location on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. The collection grew from a few hundred paintings and objects to more than 2 million works of art. The Met has 17 different curated departments, spanning 5000 years of human culture.
Interesting The Metropolitan Museum of Art Facts:
The Met was built in an area that was seen as undesirable, far from the wealthy mansions and paved streets of NYC.
At any time there are more tens of thousands of works of art and objects on display at The Met.
The Met contains two-million square feet of floor space.
The original Met building was not well-received and its design was redone and today measures 20 times the size of its original design in 1880.
The Met is almost one-quarter mile in length.
The Met building is comprised of more than 20 structures that were added on over the years.
The Costume Institute contains more than 35,000 costumes and contains pieces from the 1400s to today.
The Department of Greek and Roman Art began with a Roman sarcophagus when the museum first opened to more than 17,000 objects.
The Met is one of the largest museums in the world, and houses much more than just art. It contains paintings, musical instruments, weapons, historical objects, clothing, Egyptian art, and sculptures.
The Robert Lehman Collection is a private collection at The Met donated by Robert Lehman's foundation after his death. It contained more than 2,600 pieces.
There are more than 25,000 photographs in The Met's collection.
Approximately 400,000 pieces in the collections of The Met can be found online. Many images are available for use for non-commercial purposes.
Some of the famous artists whose work is on display in The Met include Vermeer, Raphael, Botticelli, Veneziano, Goya, Leonardo da Vinci, Degas, Michelangelo, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani.
The collections within The Met are owned by about 950 people that make up a private corporation of fellows and benefactors.
The Met is governed by a board that includes NYC officials, museum trustees, and elected members.
Although a suggested admission fee of $25 exists, people can visit with as little as $0.01 if they cannot afford more.
There are more than 6 million visitors to The Met each year.
The Met hosts concerts, classes, and other events and guided tours are free.
There are four piles of uncarved stone atop the four columns on the front façade of The Met. These were originally meant to be sculptures but money ran out, and the stone piles remain today. They would have been sculptures representing the Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance, and Modern art eras.


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