Brief History of the Met
A group of Americans staying in Paris, France in 1866 are responsible for the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. John Jay was the first one who came up with the idea and they agreed. Upon his return to the United States, he lead the Union League Club in New York to gather other civic leaders, businessmen, artists, art collectors, and philanthropists to help make the idea a reality. The Museum first opened on April 13, 1870. It was originally located in the Dodworth Building at 681 Fifth Avenue. The first object there was a Roman sarcophagus. Today, tens of thousands of objects are on view at any given time in the Museum’s two-million-square-foot building.
The museum was relocated to the Douglas Mansion briefly before ending up in its current location on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, and it opened to the public once more on March 30, 1880. The initial structure by the architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould was of Ruskinian Gothic design; however, many additions have been added to the museum since. The additions completely encompass the original building.
https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/history
Exhibits
In Praise of Painting, Dutch Masterpieces at the Met
Exhibition Overview (October 16, 2018 – October 4, 2020)
Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century—the Golden Age of Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer—have been a highlight of The Met collection since the Museum’s founding purchase in 1871. This exhibition brings together some of the Museum’s greatest paintings to present this remarkable chapter of art history in a new light. Through sixty-seven works of art organized thematically, In Praise of Painting orients visitors to key issues in seventeenth-century Dutch culture—from debates about religion and conspicuous consumption to painters’ fascination with the domestic lives of women.
The exhibition provides a fresh perspective on the canon and parameters of the Dutch Golden Age by uniting paintings from Benjamin Altman’s bequest, the Robert Lehman Collection, and the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection. Works typically displayed separately in the Museum’s galleries—such as Rembrandt’s Gerard de Lairesse and Lairesse’s own Apollo and Aurora—are presented side by side, producing a visually compelling narrative about the tensions between realism and idealism during this period. The presentation also provides the opportunity to conserve and display rarely exhibited paintings, including Margareta Haverman’s A Vase of Flowers—one of only two known paintings by the artist and the only painting by an early modern Dutch woman currently in The Met collection. The exhibition takes its title from one of the period’s major works of art theory, Philips Angel’s The Praise of Painting (1642), a pioneering defense of realism in art.
Overview & Image From
https://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/in-praise-of-painting-dutch-masterpieces
Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China
Exhibition Overview (August 26, 2017–August 4, 2019)
“From the standpoint of splendid scenery, painting cannot equal [real] landscape. But when it comes to the wonders of brush and ink, [real] landscape is no match for painting!”
—Dong Qichang (1555–1636)
About a thousand years ago, the Chinese landscape painter Guo Xi posed the question, “In what does a gentleman’s love of landscape consist?” This question is at the heart of the exhibition, which explores the many uses of landscape in the Chinese visual arts.
This exhibition, which showcases more than 120 Chinese landscape paintings in four rotations, offers insights into the tradition, revealing distinctions between types of landscape that might not be obvious at first glance. What appears to be a simple mountain dwelling, for example, turns out to be the villa of the painter’s friend, encoding a wish for his happy retirement. Similarly, what seems at first to be a simple study in dry brushwork turns out to be an homage to an old master, an expression of reverence for what has come before.
Drawn primarily from The Met’s holdings and supplemented by a dozen private loans, the presentation is augmented by decorative art objects with landscape themes.
Overview & Image From
https://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/streams-and-mountains
Monumental Journey, The Daguerreotypes of Girault De Prangey
Exhibition Overview (January 30–May 12, 2019)
In 1842, artist, architectural historian, archaeologist, and pioneer photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804–1892) embarked on a three-year photographic excursion
throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and he returned to France with more than one thousand daguerreotypes—an unparalleled feat in the history of photography. Among the images he created are the earliest surviving photographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Jerusalem and among the first daguerreotypes depicting Italy.
A trailblazer of the daguerreotype process, Girault used oversize plates and innovative formats to produce what is today the world’s oldest photographic archive—all in the service of a brand-new type of archaeological fieldwork. This exhibition, the first in the United States devoted to Girault, and the first to focus on his Mediterranean journey will feature approximately 120 of his daguerreotypes, supplemented by examples of his graphic work—watercolors, paintings, and his lithographically illustrated publications.
Overview & Image From
https://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/monumental-journey-girault-de-prangey-daguerreotypes
The Tale of Genji, A Japanese Classic Illuminated
Exhibition Overview (MARCH 5–JUNE 16, 2019)
This will be the first major loan exhibition in North America to focus on the artistic tradition inspired by Japan’s most celebrated work of literature, The Tale of Genji. Written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting in the early eleventh-century imperial court, and often referred to as the world’s first psychological novel, the tale recounts the amorous escapades of the “Shining Prince” Genji and introduces some of the most iconic female characters in the history of Japanese literature. Covering the period from the eleventh century to the present, the exhibition will feature more than 120 works, including paintings, calligraphy, silk robes, lacquer wedding set items, a palanquin for the shogun’s bride, and popular art such as ukiyo-e prints and modern manga. Highlights include two National Treasures and several works recognized as Important Cultural Properties. For the first time ever outside Japan, rare works will be on view from Ishiyamadera Temple—where, according to legend, Shikibu started writing the tale.
Overview & Image From
https://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/tale-of-genji