Your Guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the place to visit if you’ve only got time to see one Museum in New York City. In a city known for its massive array of museums and galleries, The Met is the best of the bunch. One visit will not do this massive tomb of treasures justice – after all, this is a museum on the scope of renowned institutions such as the Louvre and the British Museum. At over a quarter mile in length, the Metropolitan Museum of Art contains over 1.5 million objects, spanning across 5,000 years of human history and countless cultures.

It goes without saying that a visit to the Met can be overwhelming. The collection is set out over two floors of the humongous building with more than 900 rooms! While you won’t get anywhere near seeing everything in a day, you can see the highlights in a few hours. In this guide, I hope to provide you with an overview of the Museum, while pointing out some of its most notable pieces and displays for a first time visitor.

• Spending a few days in New York? You won’t want to spend it all in the Met (even though you could!). Check out my recommended itinerary and city guide HERE.

The Met – The Basics:

• Where? 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York
• When? The Met is open 10.00 – 5.00pm Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday, and stays open until 9.00pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The Museum is closed on Wednesdays.
• How much? Admission to the Met costs $30.00 USD for adults (children 12 and under get in for free). Note that residents of New York State (and students in New Jersey and Connecticut) can take advantage of the Museum’s “pay what you wish” option. The Met is also included in the New York Sightseeing Pass. Admission to the Met also gets you into the Met Cloisters and Met Breuer Museums (neither of which I’ve visited).
• How to get there: You won’t miss the Met if you walk along the east edge of Central Park. You can take the 4, 5 or 6 train to 86th Street and walk three blocks west, or take the 1 train to 86th Street and cross east through Central Park.
• Website: https://www.metmuseum.org/

Tips for Visiting the Met

The Met Museum was founded back in 1870 and nowadays sees over 6 million visitors a year. Its the most popular museum in New York, and for good reason. Unlike many popular attractions, I feel like the Met does a decent job at making it feel not too crowded, given the shear space across which guests spread out when exploring its halls. With that said, a little forward planning will definitely result in a more rewarding experience.

You should reserve your tickets in advance. Gone are the days of paying a few dollars at the entry (or nothing at all), unless you’re a local that still qualifies for the Museum’s suggested donation program. You can buy your tickets on the official website. If you’re going to be seeing a fair bit of New York however, I recommend the Sightseeing Pass – I used it on a trip to the city and saved quite a bit in attraction fees overall. Note that the New York CityPass does not include admission to the Met in its current lineup.

Upon arrival, you should pick up an audio guide. They come with a built in Director’s Tour, which will guide you through the Museum’s highlights at your own pace. I recommend using it as a base, and branching off into whichever exhibits are of interest to you.

Exploring the Met’s Galleries

The Metropolitan Museum of Art contains a myriad of galleries, some you won’t even set a foot in on a reasonably comprehensive highlights tour. Throughout the Museum you’ll find artworks and artefacts quite literally from across the world. A visit to the Met takes you all over the globe and through time. One moment you’ll be looking at shining suits of armour, the next exploring an actual tomb from Ancient Egypt. Swing by a Ming era Chinese courtyard then follow it up with some of the most important paintings in American history. The museum even has a modern art wing (though I didn’t spend much time there, getting my fix at the excellent Museum of Modern Art).

Entering the Museum’s Great Hall, you can turn right into Egypt, left to Rome, or go straight into Medieval times. Or you can head upstairs to visit realms as varied as Asia and the Middle East, or check out some Renaissance masterpieces. With so much to see, now I’ll try to give you a more comprehensive overview of the main areas.

The Egyptian Art Gallery

I chose to start my tour of the Met with the Egyptian collection. The Museum’s range of Ancient Egyptian pieces is unmatched in North America, with pieces dating all the way back to the Palaeolithic Era (some 300,000 years ago). The main bulk of the 39 room collection was acquired by the Met during the first half of the 20th century, as the Museum sponsored a number of excavations at Egyptian sites under an agreement where it would acquire half of the objects found (the other half going to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo).

As you enter the Egyptian galleries, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the restored entrance of a Old Kingdom Burial Chamber, the Mastaba Tomb of Perneb. From there, the succeeding galleries are filled with sarcophaguses and statues before culminating at the Temple of Dendur. Yes, the Met actually contains a full scale temple from Ancient Egypt! This impressive structure is one of the Museum’s highlight pieces and was gifted to the United States in recognition of the nation’s aid in protecting Egypt’s monuments from the rising Lake Nasser. Reassembled in the Museum’s Sackler Wing, the temple transports you to the days of ancient civilisation.

The American Wing

Moving through Egypt, you’ll eventually come out into the American Wing. Centred around the sunlit atrium of the Charles Engelhard Courtyard, this section of the Met actually spans across both the ground and second floors. Primarily focused on American art dating prior to 1920, the American Wing aims to showcase the history of the nation through artwork, starting with its east coast colonies and gradually expanding over the course of the next few centuries. The upper floor of the American Wing contains a number of America’s greatest artistic masterpieces. Some of the most famous in the collection are the painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, and John Singer Sargent’s Madame X.

My favourite part of the American Wing sits on the ground floor, behind the preserved facade of the Second Branch Bank of the United States. Going through the door, you’ll pass through the Period Rooms – immersive interior designs depicting living spaces, reflecting specific styles and moments in America’s history. Its like touring a house through multiple time periods!

Medieval Art & Arms and Armour

Continuing your tour of the Museum’s ground floor, you’ll move into the Medieval Galleries. The Met is actually home to one of the world’s most comprehensive medieval collections, covering the artwork of the Mediterranean and Europe from the 4th to 16th Centuries. As expected for this time period, there is quite a lot of religious artwork here associated with the Christian faith – a lot of it definitely wouldn’t seem out of place in the Vatican Museums. Think stain glassed windows, crucifixes and depictions of Jesus, Mary and various Saints. Some of the stain glass on display actually comes from significant churches such as Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis.

Adjacent to the Medieval Collection is the separate collection of Arms and Armoury. While suits of armour are displayed from various cultures in this section, the standout is the set of fully mounted horsemen in battle armour. Explore this area in more detail and you’ll see the armour sets of notable names through history, including Henry II of France.

Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas

Your attention will be drawn to various parts of the world moving into the next set of galleries. I haven’t spent a huge amount of time in the Met’s halls dedicated to Africa, Oceania and the indigenous cultures of the Americas, however there are nearly 12,000 works in this collection spanning forty centuries. There’s no doubt that a huge breadth of cultures are covered here, so it does initially seem like a hodgepodge. Notwithstanding this, the collection of sculptures, masks and other ornaments are linked in their connections to unique ancestors, deities and other supernatural forces.

The New Guinean Bis Poles tower over one of the main halls in this part of the Museum. They were created by the Asmat people of south western New Guinea (Indonesia) for use in feasts dedicated to the newly dead, with the poles thought to assist the recently departed to reach the heavens. Not far away from the Poles, a ceiling of suspended paintings, commissioned by the Kwoma people of the island, harkens to traditional ceremonial houses.

Greek and Roman Art in the Met

Rounding out the Museum’s first floor is an excellent range of sculptures, vases and paintings from the Classical Greek and Roman eras (dating about 4500BC to 330AD). It is centred around a large sculpture court which is one of the most popular halls in the entire museum. You’ll feel your again being transported into another era among the gods, emperors and other noteworthy figures depicted in the collection. My eyes were instantly drawn to the Column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis. Dating back to the Hellenistic Period of Ancient Greece, the column originally stood 58 feet high and is easily recognisable.

Another highly significant piece in this exhibition comes from Ancient Rome – the Marble Sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysus and the Seasons. Carved for a wealthy Roman client, the marble coffin is adorned with forty human and animal figures surrounding the god Dionysus and four prominent figures said to depict each of the Four Seasons. The intricacy of the carvings are incredible!

Asian Art

Heading upstairs to the Met’s second floor, the Asian Collection is another interesting set of galleries. The immense collection houses treasures from the 4th millennium BC onwards while covering the cultures of ancient and modern China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. Naturally the sculptures and murals in these halls are heavily influenced by the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism that originated and spread from these parts of the world, along with the ceramics and pottery that we often associate with Asian cultures.

Some of the more notable objects on display in the Met’s Asian halls include an enthroned depiction of the Hindu god Vishnu (the museum’s largest sculpture from South Asia) and a ceramic Chinese dancer dating back to the era of the Chinese Han Dynasty. The Halls of the collection also surround a recreated 17th century Suzhou Chinese Garden, which has been known to host cultural events at various times of the year.

Arabic and Near Eastern Art

Going the opposite direction from the upper level of the Great Hall to Asia, you’ll enter the Islamic world. The Met’s Islamic collection primarily covers the period from the 7th to 19th centuries and arguably is the most comprehensive assortment of Islamic art, at least in the Western world. The 15 galleries through this wing emphasise the diverse geographies in which Islam took hold from its inception, with specific rooms dedicated to works from Arabia, Iran, Central Asia, Turkey and more. The collection also contains pre-Islamic artefacts, such as the Human Headed Winged Lions crafted by the Assyrians and the excavated Babylonian panel, again with heavy lion symbolism.

Two of the displays that captured my attention while passing through this part of the Met drew heavily from Islamic culture. A bright blue Mihrab from a mosque in Isfahan, Iran provides an example of the beautifully crafted niches in these sacred houses of worship that point prayers in the direction of Mecca, the holiest site in all of Islam. Meanwhile, the spectacular Damascus Room is a recreation of an upper class Syrian home dating back to the reign of the Ottoman Empire.

European Paintings and Sculptures in the Met

The Met’s second floor also contains a stunning array of European Paintings, with more than 1700 paintings stretching across a period of approximately 500 years. The collection originated back to the Museum’s establishment in 1870, when it acquired 174 European paintings from private collections, and that has obviously expanded significantly since. You could spend the whole day in the halls adorned with masterpieces from names such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and El Greco. There’s Christian overtones aplenty, with Caravaggio’s renowned Denial of Saint Peter being one of the most famous pieces. Having seen his more famous pieces in the Museum of Modern Art, I was also drawn to Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses.

The Museum’s lower level also contains a collection of European sculptures. While I only passed through this section quickly, works that stand out include Perseus with the Head of Madusa and a the tormented statue depiction of Count Ugolino and His Sons.

If you have time to see more of the Met’s European collection, you can also stop by the Robert Lehman Collection. Situated to the rear of the museum’s ground floor, its displays the fruits of a bequest of 2,600 European pieces.

With so much to see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, its impossible to cover it all comprehensively. Hopefully this post has given you an idea as to what parts of the Met are of greatest interest to you. While doing a tour of the highlights will eat up an hour or two on its own, if you’ve got extra time to spend, you’ll be able to do a deeper dive into at least one of the areas I’ve covered in this post. If you’ve been to the Met, chances are I haven’t even mentioned your favourite piece in this article. Thats your cue to let me know what you found the most interesting on your tour of the Met Museum.