Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, United States.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an encyclopedic art museum at 1000 Fifth Avenue, on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Its light beige stone facade rises above a broad flight of shallow steps, with four fluted columns and a round-arched entrance under a red banner reading "THE MET". The roughly 2-million-square-foot building, begun in 1880, holds 1.5 million works in 17 curatorial departments.
A group of businessmen, artists, and philanthropists founded the museum in 1870 to make a major art collection accessible to American citizens. The first rooms opened in February 1872 in a rented building before the current main structure beside Central Park took shape.
New Yorkers and art lovers from around the world often spend hours moving between galleries, returning regularly to revisit favorite works or catch rotating exhibitions. Many visitors use the spacious courtyards and staircases as meeting points or resting spots between gallery tours.
The museum opens daily except for two public holidays and allows visitors to return over three consecutive days, which can be helpful given the large exhibition area. A complete tour through all sections takes several hours, so planning ahead or focusing on a few departments makes sense for most people.
A complete Egyptian temple from 15 BCE stands in its own gallery with a glass wall and reflecting pool that recreates its original setting beside the Nile. The temple was given to the United States as a gift after being saved during the construction of the Aswan Dam.
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