Metropolitan Museum of Art
With over 2 million works of art from around the world and throughout history, the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection is thought to be the most comprehensive in the Western world. It attracts around 5 million visitors every year. Collection includes works from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, over African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art to paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters and American modern art.
More information and photos - Metropolitan Museum of Art Offical Site
First Floor and Mezzanines
Egyptian Art
The coolest exhibit in the large ancient Egyptian collection is the Temple of Dendur. The Temple was built by the Roman governor of Egypt during the rule of emperor Augustus, around 15 BC.
In 1963, the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge many ancient Egyptian monuments. To save them, they were removed from their original sites to be restored on different locations in Egypt. One of such monuments, the Temple of Dendur was presented as a gift to the USA in return for their help in the project.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
Precolumbian Gold
The most fascinating part of the Africa, Oceania, and the Americas Art Collection is the Precolumbian Gold Treasury. Its contents come from all of the gold-working regions in the Americas, from Peru in South America to Mexico in North America. It covers a long period that began in the late centuries BC and ended with the arrival of the Spanish in the early sixteenth century.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
Roof Garden
During the warmer months (spring to late fall), there is an open air sculpture exhibition on the roof terrace. Every year, the exhibition features the work of a different living artist. Enjoy the art and the New York skyline over the Central Park.
In 2012, artist Tomás Saraceno has created the Cloud City, a sculpture of large, interconnected modules constructed with transparent and reflective materials. Visitors may enter and walk through the sculpture.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
Arms and Armor
The exhibits date from 5th to the late 19th century and offer a broad range of the best examples from Europe, America, Japan, India, and various Islamic cultures. The photo shows the European Armor for Field and Tournament Gallery which offers sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European armor for men and horses, created for kings and noblemen to use on the battlefield and in tournaments. The gallery features one of personal armors of King Henry VIII, worn in his last campaign against the French at Calais in 1544.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
Second and Third Floors
Chinese Courtyard in the Style of the Ming Dynasty
Modeled on a seventeenth-century courtyard in the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets in Suzhou, the court was entirely constructed using traditional tools and techniques. A team of twenty-six Chinese craftsmen spent six months in New York assembling the components. It opened to the public in 1981.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
Vincent van Gogh: Wheat Field with Cypresses
In this rich and saturated painting, van Gogh captures the rush of the wind, the extreme heat of the afternoon, and a sense of immediacy through his thick layers of paint. He regarded this sun-drenched landscape as one of his "best" summer canvases and repeated the composition three times: first in a reed-pen drawing (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and then in two oil variants he made later that fall (National Gallery, London; private collection). Van Gogh painted this picture at Saint-Rémy in late June–early July 1889.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
The Assyrian Royal Court
The gallery has been arranged to evoke the main audience hall of the ninth-century B.C. Assyrian palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud in northern Mesopotamia. The reliefs on the walls come from various rooms in the palace and depict the king performing a ritual, surrounded by attendants and supernatural creatures. They were excavated during the mid-nineteenth century in one of the earliest archaeological expeditions to the Near East. The hall is guarded by a colossal winged, human-headed lion and bull.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website
South Asian Sculpture
The collection from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka represents sculptural arts associated with the temples and shrines of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The arts of the Indian subcontinent are represented from early centuries B.C. up to around the sixteenth century.
The photo shows 12th-century figure that embodies the Indian idea that physical perfection is a sign of spiritual fulfillment.
More information and photos on Museum Official Website