The Metropolitan Museum of Art has contributed more than 8,000 images of installation views from its galleries to the Artstor Digital Library. The images document temporary exhibitions from c. 1970-2008, including both gallery views and objects, providing valuable records of pivotal exhibitions held at the museum over nearly four decades.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the most comprehensive art museum in the western hemisphere, with more than two million works of art in its permanent collection. Its collections span 5,000 years of world culture from every part of the globe.

When the museum first opened in 1872, it was housed in a townhouse located on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The collection was founded with 174 European paintings. Today the comprehensive collections are shared by 17 diverse curatorial departments, and the main building, incorporating successive generations of expansions, occupies more than 2 million square feet.

The original commissioned home for the museum, the Gothic Revival-style building designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold, opened in 1880, and remains at the core of the many subsequent extensions.

In addition to housing and exhibiting it’s extraordinary permanent collection, the museum generates and hosts a diverse program of exhibitions annually, welcoming millions of visitors.

The museum also includes campuses at The Met Cloisters (medieval art) in Fort Tryon Park and The Met Breuer (modern and contemporary art), Madison Avenue.

For related collections in Artstor, see:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Brooklyn Museum Costumes
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: William Keighley

And the public collection at: The Metropolitan Museum of Art