Metropolitan Museum of Art

Where else can you find masterpieces extending from the dawn of civilization to today; or encyclopedic holdings from all the major cultures on earth; or genres ranging from paintings to period rooms, sculpture to suits of armor, metalwork to musical instruments—all situated in a palatial building beside one of the world's most magnificent parks?

When the Metropolitan Museum came into being in 1870, the founders stressed its role in giving popular instruction. Ever since then its public has expressed interest in obtaining a general guidebook to all the multiple facets of its encyclopedic collections. But a museum is a living, constantly changing institution, and the preparation of such a guide presents many problems. The scope and depth of the Museum's holdings are described with flexibility in mind, so that alterations to the building and changes in the collections can be readily accommodated in future editions of this "Guide". …

Little appreciated in his lifetime, Thomas Eakins is today recognized as one of America's finest painters, a respected sculptor and photographer, and an influential art teacher. This Bulletin accompanies an exhibition of his oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings owned by the Museum and a selection of our holdings of photographs associated with him and his circle. …

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York houses one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities and works of art. Their preservation is a responsibility that involves everyone who serves the Museum and who has access to the collection. This handbook offers a practical guide to the ways in which different art objects should be handled and cared for, whether they are on display, in transit, or in storage; and it also explains some of the fundamental principles of conservation that underlie Museum practice. …

There are now over 400 Italian paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, 150 of them acquired in the more than thirty years since the Museum first published a catalogue of its Italian works…

The arts of the Early Medieval period form a major, yet little-known, part of the material from the Middle Ages in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Recent research on this fascinating period from approximately A.D. 400 to 800 reveals a more comprehensive picture of what has been traditionally referred to as the Dark Ages or the Migration period. …