Facts about The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Medieval manuscripts and illuminated texts comprise over 12,000 items in the Met's collection, making it one of the world's largest repositories of European medieval art and literature.
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Egyptian Temple of Dendur, a 15 BC sandstone structure, occupies an entire gallery within the Met's Egyptian Art wing after the museum received it as a gift from the Egyptian government in 1968.
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Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art can access its entire collection of 375,000 digitized artworks online through the museum's open access policy launched in 2017.
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Approximately 250 paintings by European masters hang in the Met's galleries, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Caravaggio acquired through decades of strategic acquisitions.
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Annual membership dues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2024 start at 75 dollars for individual supporters, generating millions in revenue for acquisitions and operations.
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Thomas Hoving served as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1979, overseeing the acquisition of 7,000 artworks during his transformative tenure.
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Over 2 million objects fill the Met's 2 million square feet of gallery space across its Fifth Avenue location and Cloisters branch in Upper Manhattan.
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In 1870, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors to the public in New York City with a collection of 174 paintings and sculptures.