Metropolitan Museum
Description:
“Met” is a unique museum that has no equal in the world in the variety of exhibits. Its encyclopedic collection contains more than 2.7 million objects organized in seventeen departments.
• Ancient Middle Eastern art,
• Weapons and armor,
• Arts of Africa, Oceania and America,
• Asian arts,
Costume Institute (temporarily unavailable)
• Drawings and prints,
• Ancient Egyptian art,
• European painting,
• European sculpture and decorative arts,
• American decorative arts, painting and sculpture,
• Ancient Greek and Roman art,
The arts of Islam,
• Collections by Robert Lehman,
Medieval art (including the museum’s branch – The Cloisters)
• Contemporary art,
• Musical instruments,
• Photographs, as well as a library, special exhibitions and a rooftop garden.
The collection of the Metropolitan Museum will be enough for a dozen such institutions; the difference between the Met and other famous collections - the Prado, the Hermitage, the London National Gallery - is that it presents exhibits that are usually found only in specialized ethnographic and anthropological museums, in collections of folk and so-called "primitive" art. Ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Indian art is quite widely represented in European and other collections, but to find a comparable collection of artifacts of civilizations of pre-Columbian America, you will have to go to Mexico or Peru.
Getting to know the largest museum in the Western Hemisphere takes time and stamina. Whether special training is a prerequisite for the full perception of works of art is a difficult question. It is obvious, however, that a qualified guide will significantly facilitate the process of acquaintance with unknown works, offer a canonical (or unexpected!) interpretation of well-known masterpieces, talk about the secrets associated with the creation of the museum and the formation of its collection, point to forgeries issued for the works of old masters (a scandal silenced by the museum administration!), conduct through little-known corridors and repositories.
The area of the museum exceeds 190,000 square meters, which is three times the area of the Louvre; the exhibition spaces are a real maze in which it is easy to get lost - is it worth spending half an hour on an independent search for a particular department or painting? I will be happy to fulfill your wishes. Perhaps you would like to attend one of the concerts held in the halls of the museum or dine to the music of the string quartet? (Fridays and Saturdays).
Visiting a museum can take the form of a casual conversation or a formal lecture – it depends on your interests and inclinations.
The museum is open daily (except for public holidays).
Entrance tickets: children under 12 years - free, students - $12.00, pensioners - $17.00, adults - $25.00.
Tickets also allow you to visit two branches of the museum - Met Cloisters and Met Breuer - within three days of first use.
The guide license gives the right to extraordinary visits to most attractions - I will be happy to save you from unnecessary hassle and time wasted!
Since I am a "friend" of the museum, we will have extraordinary access to special exhibitions, discounts in the shops of the museum, its cafes and restaurants and other benefits.
Tourists are provided with individual radio systems with headphones.