The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art commonly known as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum that was officially incorporated in New York City on April 13, 1870. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. The museum had a record 5,727,258 visitors in fiscal year 2025. It was the most-visited museum in the United States and the fourth-most visited art museum in the world. Conceived by American expatriates in Paris along with several wealthy New Yorkers, the Met didn’t host its first exhibition until 1872, but it soon grew into one of the world’s leading collections of fine art, a status it still enjoys today.

Back in 1866, a group of American socialites living in Paris, including lawyer John Jay, decided they wanted to create “a national institution and gallery of art.” They reached out to the Union League Club of New York, which pulled together the influence and funding needed to make it happen. On this day in 1870, the city approved their Act of Incorporation, requiring that the collection be open to the public year-round and free of charge. Year-round is not unexpected, but to be free of charge is definitely something unusual.

Back in 2000, The Met’s permanent collection boasted over two million works, but now it lists about 1.5 million. The collection is spread across 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, located along Museum Mile on the east side of Central Park in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, is one of the largest art museums in the world by area. The first part of the roughly 2-million-square-foot structure was built in 1880. A smaller second location, The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, Upper Manhattan, houses an impressive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

The Met got its first piece, a Roman sarcophagus, in November of its founding year. In 1876, it completed the purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art, cementing its status as North America’s top spot for artifacts and artwork from Antiquity. Taking advantage of the Franco-Prussian War, Jay acquired an impressive 174 works by Dutch Old Masters in 1871, giving the museum a strong collection before it even opened its first location in 1872. By 1880, a decade after its founding, the Met had moved to its current home on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. Today, it showcases some of the largest collections of European and Antique art, along with pieces from every continent and in nearly every medium. It’s not just a leading cultural hub in New York, but also one of the world’s most famous and visited museums, welcoming around 7 million visitors each year.