On this day: The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens its doors
Richard Morris Hunt and McKim, Mead and White, original building; Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates, renovations | Metropolitan Museum of Art; interior, Leon Levy and Shelby White Court | original building completed 1902; renovation completed 2011|New York, New York |Photographer: Ralph Lieberman
Happy 141st birthday to the Metropolitan Museum of Art! The Museum opened its doors to the public on February 20, 1872 (some 30 blocks below its current location). Today the Met is the largest art museum in the United States, boasting more than two million works in its permanent collection.
ARTstor is proud to collaborate with the Museum in sharing three collections in the Digital Library: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with an excellent selection of almost 10,000 images from the permanent collection; The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Brooklyn Museum Costumes, with nearly 6,000 images of American and European costumes and accessories formerly in the Brooklyn Museum; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art: William Keighley, featuring nearly 4,000 images of European art and architecture, as well as photographs of the Met itself and the Met’s Cloisters museum and gardens. Additionally, in 2007, ARTstor and The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) offering scholars high-resolution images for publication free of charge; the Museum currently makes almost 13,000 images available through the program.