What to see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a huge museum that has more than 2 million works of art and is located in northern Manhattan next to Central Park.

It is the second most visited museum in the world, behind the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The museum was opened in 1872 when a railroad man, Robert Lee Jenkins, donated his private art collection and became the museum’s first president. Little by little it grew until it reached the 2 million works of art it currently owns.

What to see at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is made up of 19 sections, each with distinctive charm. The most important thing to see in the Metropolitan is the following:

• Egyptian art. In this section, objects from private collections as well as from excavations carried out in Egypt are mixed. Among its 36,000 pieces, the Temple of Dendur stands out, which was donated by the Egyptian government after saving it in the construction of the Aswan dam (as well as the Temple of Debod in Madrid). In addition, we must also highlight the 24 wooden models discovered in a tomb in Deir el-Bahari and that show the daily life of the Middle Kingdom.
• Greek and Roman art. With pieces from ancient Greece and Rome and of different styles, several reliefs and murals and the reconstruction of a Roman villa that was buried in an eruption of Vesuvius stand out.

• Islamic art. Both of religious and non-religious origin and covering places from Spain and North Africa to parts of Asia. Some manuscripts of the Koran and the reconstruction of a typical Damascus house stand out. There are also various textile elements and ceramic pieces.
• European painting. Without a doubt the main part of the museum. The museum has paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Veermer, Van Gogh or Velázquez.

In addition to these four sections, there are also others dedicated to photography, decorative arts, oriental art, medieval art and, of course, that of the United States with important paintings and sculptures by American artists.

The cloisters also stand out as part of the building, so called because they are reconstructions of different medieval European cloisters.

You can find more information about this museum on the official website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.