The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in the world and the second most visited after the Louvre. Its collection includes more than three million works of art.
History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1870, a group of Americans (including banker John Taylor Johnston, publisher George Palmer Putnam, and artist Eastman Johnson) established the museum in an effort to give the American people access to art. The collection was based on the private collections of the founders and purchases made with donations from sponsors. At first, however, the museum did not have a serious budget; copies of paintings by European masters were ordered to replenish it.
But in 1901, millionaire Jacob Rogers bequeathed $4.5 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His example was followed by other philanthropists, and the museum became a major purchaser of works of art. At the same time, the collection was augmented by donations. Catherine Lorillard Wolfe bequeathed 143 paintings and money, on which canvases “Madame Charpentier with the Children” by Renoir, “The Abduction of Rebecca” by Delacroix, “The Death of Socrates” by David were purchased. Banker Benjamin Altman gave such masterpieces as Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, Vermeer’s The Sleeping Girl, Dürer’s Madonna with Child and St. Anne. In 1969, philanthropist Robert Lehman gave the museum his private collection of paintings, drawings, works of European decorative-applied art of the XIV-XIX centuries – 2600 works are on display in the “New Wing”, built especially for this collection.
Gradually a special building for the museum was built in Central Park, which every year expanded and broadened, eventually becoming a whole architectural complex.
Сollection
Speaking of the collection, despite the fact that the Metropolitan Museum is a collection of world art, its patriotism is so peculiar to Americans.
Most of the items in the museum came from private collectors who sought to bring knowledge of art to the people. So, by the 1930s the Metropolitan Museum of Art became the owner of the largest collection of works of Western European artists in America, including works by Titian, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Goya, El Greco and many others.
Today the funds of the Metropolitan Museum of Art include more than two million works of art, making a huge variety of collections that are simply impossible to list in one line. But it’s safe to say that there are no historical periods or art movements you won’t find in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Once you visit it, it’s easy to see why America is so proud of it.