Top 10 Astonishing Facts About the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) entrance façade on the Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City. Photo By Hugo Schneider – Wikimedia

Top 10 Astonishing Facts About the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art commonly known as “the Met” is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million pieces divided among 17 curatorial departments.

The main building in New York is at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. By area, it is one of the world’s largest art museums.

Its second location is `The Cloisters’ at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. It is much smaller and contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

The museum is home to classical antique things, ancient Egypt paintings, sculptures, and modern art. The founders opened it with an idea to inculcate an interest in art among the American masses. The Met has a lot of amazing things associated with it.

Here are 10 Astonishing Facts about Met

1. It is the World’s Greatest Art Center

Greek and Roman gallery. Photo By A. Balet – Wikimedia

When the met was started, it had a collection of just 174 European paintings. But, today it is home to more than 2,000 great European paintings that date back to the 12^th century. It beautifully displays over 5,000 years of art from around all the corners of the world for everyone to experience and indulge in.

With 2.2 million square feet of space and more than 2 million works in its permanent collections, the Metropolitan Museum of Art contains more treasures than most visitors will ever be able to see in a lifetime. 

The Met is a living legend as it contains a wide range of brilliant fascinating artwork. It truly is the greatest art center.

2. All Artists Under One Roof

As the world’s greatest art center, the Met is an esteemed museum that has a wide range of works of art. The museum houses, under one roof, the works of some of the world’s most famous artists.

There is work belonging to creatives such as 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.

3. More Than 4 Million Visitors

The Great Hall. Photo By TomasEE – Wikimedia

In the last few years, the average crowd at the main museum and the Cloisters has crossed over 4 million visitors annually. Among this population, 63 percent are outsiders while the rest are New York City residents.

The highest number of visitors to visit on a single day was 52,333 on December 30, 1986. In 2017, 7.3 million guests visited the museum. The museum is always filled with art lovers every day.

4. The Metal Button

The Met used to issue a metal button emblazoned with the museum’s logo to all guests as proof of admission. The iconic button was introduced in 1971.

In 2013, the Met retired the button and replaced it with a sticker. The soaring metal prices in recent years made the trinket too costly for the museum to procure.

The new offering will likely never be as nostalgic as its predecessor, which for years has been incorporated into artworks, featured on museum souvenirs, and collected by zealous patrons.

5. The Fashion Side

French Fancy dress costume at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo By Paul Poiret – Wikimedia Commons

The Costume Institute has been part of the Met since the ’40s and won buzz in the ’70s for shows like “The World of Balenciaga.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a shopping Mecca in itself.  The Museum of Costume Art merged with the Met and became its Costume Institute department. Every year, this Costume department holds two shows in which it exhibits more than 35,000 costumes and accessories.

But in the 2010s, the tail of fashion began to wag the dog of the art museum. Images of the Met as a stuffy temple of connoisseurship were definitively displaced in the media hive mind by paparazzi shots of the red carpet of the Met Gala.

Meanwhile, fashion-lovers can delight themselves at the Costume Institute, which boasts more than 33,000 historic, contemporary, and culturally significant articles of clothing and accessories from five continents and seven centuries.

6. Travel the World

By visiting the Met, you can temporarily leave New York City in your mind. Visitors can stand in an ancient Egyptian temple, relax in a Chinese Garden Court, stroll around a 16th-century Spanish castle’s patio, visit a villa bedroom that was swallowed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, and admire a room like the ones found in the late Ottoman period in Damascus, Syria.

7. Travel Back in Time

Rogier van der Weyden, Polyptych with the Nativity, c. 1450 Photo By Rogier van der Weyden – Wikimedia

The Cloisters, a branch of the Met that houses medieval art, architecture, and artifacts will take you back in time. Its idyllic location makes it a popular day-trip destination for city dwellers.

Built as an ensemble that incorporates architectural elements from medieval cloisters and other European sites, the Cloisters loom over the Hudson River and are surrounded by lush Fort Tryon Park.

8. Roof Garden

Looking north on the rooftop garden at Met. Photo By Jim Henderson – Wikimedia Commons

The Met’s rooftop terrace is a delightful spot for a breath of fresh air. Visitors are treated to unobstructed panoramic views of New York City’s skyline and Central Park’s lush treetops.

The café serves wine, beer, specialty drinks, coffee, soft drinks, light snacks, and desserts to pick you up after hours of art and culture. The terrace also features an annual single-artist installation.

9. Met has a TSA Screening Facility

Back in 2009, Homeland Security mandated anything shipped as cargo on a commercial flight be opened and searched by the TSA. While human safety is the priority, the idea of TSA agents scooping out packing peanuts, shifting tightly arranged pallets, and man-handling priceless antiquities and artworks was too much for the museum to bear.

The Met, along with other mammoth institutions like the National Museum, enrolled in a federal screening program that allows them to operate secure screening facilities within their buildings and thereby minimize the re-screening of their works at the airports.

10. The Entrance That is Hardly Used

Waiting in line in a lobby full of tourists at the main entrance is not enjoyable at all. The best entrance to avoid these masses is at 81st Street, before the stairs, at the Uris Center for Education entrance.

It is easy to access the Met because here you’ll find shorter lines, a gift shop, less-frequented bathrooms, and elevators that will bring you to the Great Hall with your tickets already in hand.