The leading world museum that began today

February 20, On this day

Met, set, go! One of the foremost museums in the world had its main, most iconic building opening up on February 20, 1872, with the purpose of bringing art and art education to the American people. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City — colloquially as “the Met” — was in 2019 the fourth most visited art museum in the world, with some 6,479,548 visitors to its three locations.

The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan’s Upper East Side houses one of the world’s largest art galleries, and contains a permanent collection of artworks from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art, besides African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art. This entire collection reportedly contains a breathtaking over 2 million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments.