The Metropolitan Museum

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The Metropolitan Museum needed more space. The Met bought some land in Central Park. Plans were drawn by the American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould who built the initial Ruskinian Gothic structure. The building has since expanded greatly, and the various additions now completely surround the original structure.

For centuries the Museum’s collections continued to grow throughout the work of nine consecutive directors. The first of these was a U.S. Army General Luigi Palma di Cesnola, (1832-1904), Italian by birth and first director of the Met from 1879 to 1904. When Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke directed the museum from 1904 to 1910, the Met acquired a work by August Renoir in 1907.

August Renoir (1841-1919) was a French prolific painter who died nearly sixty years ago. Unequalled, he left an extensive work behind. Member of the Impressionist group, he evolved in the 1880s to a more realistic style and developed an original style of painting that transcends his early influences (Fragonard, Courbet, Alfred Dehodencq, Monet, and Italian fresco). He made more than 4,000 paintings, a number higher than Manet, Cezanne and Degas’ works together. Renoir often painted using the colors of the rainbow with short keys, delicacy, sensuality, pleasure and harmony.

Throughout his career, Renoir made the nude central to his art. “Young Girl Bathing oil on canvas” (1892), is a particularly fine example of the subject, highlighting the artist’s maturity. The painting combines elements of the artist’s earlier depictions of the nude as perfectly natural. The result emphasizes Renoir’s belief that women may be seen as modern goddesses.

“The Bay of Naples, oil on canvas,” (1881). Having been in Algeria for a month, in late October 1881, Renoir went for the trip he most desired: to visit Naples in Italy! By the end of his life, even if he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, he continued to paint with the brush attached to his hand.

Henri Matisse (December 1869-1954). In 1889, somewhere in northern France a young man of twenty years old is bedridden for months because of a big attack of appendicitis. He was bored so his mother, tenderly, offered him a small can of paint, to pass the time… It will change his life. The young man tried and excelled. In a very short time his talent was revealed… Henri Matisse will become one of the greatest painters of all times. He was the leader of Fauvism; Pablo Picasso regarded him as his great rival and friend.

Gertrude and Leo Stein had one of the most stunning collections of modern arts in 1905 which helped Henri Matisse to get known in the United States... They are also behind the meeting between Picasso and Matisse.

According to The Metropolitan Museum’s Website, in 1910 the Met was the first public institution in the world to acquire a work of art by Henri Matisse.

Nasturtiums with the Painting "Dance", 1912, oil on canvas, was one of the first works by Matisse to be viewed by a large American audience. He is best known for his paintings, but his activities as a sculptor extended through most of his career and resulted in some eighty beautiful pieces; the majorities are bronzes cast from plaster models.

In 1917 Edward S. Harkness gave to the Metropolitan a blue faience statuette of a Hippopotamus. This sculpture was found in the Egyptian nomarch Senbi II’s tomb and date from Middle Kingdom, Dynasty 12, ca. 1981-1885 Before Christ.

An Englishman, Captain H. M. Raleigh, and his family owned a picture of this blue faience hippopotamus, which they named William. In 1931 the captain wrote an article for the magazine Punch about his picture of William.

Since its arrival at the Museum the sculpture has been a favorite with visitors, and for many years, it became the unofficial mascot. Captain Raleigh’s name stuck to it and is now known as "William".

The William Society is the name given to all those who make a gift to the museum in their will or trust make lifetime donations to the Museum or promise a gift of a work of art to the MET.

The statement of purpose of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has always been "to be located in the City of New York, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said city a Museum and library of art, of encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts, and the application of arts to manufacture and practical life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and, to that end, of furnishing popular instruction." (Charter of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, State of New York, Laws of 1870, Chapter 197, passed April 13, 1870 and amended L.1898, ch. 34; L. 1908, ch. 219.) has guided the Museum for more than a century.

The Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art reaffirmed in September 2000 that “The mission of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is to collect, preserve, study, exhibit, and stimulate appreciation for and advance knowledge of works of art that collectively represent the broadest spectrum of human achievement at the highest level of quality, all in the service of the public and in accordance with the highest professional standards.”

To accomplish this mission, scientists and conservators collaborate with curators to study, preserve, and conserve the works in the Museum’s collections. So they work on objects, paintings, papers, photographs, textile conservation and scientific research.

The Metropolitan Museum is a real museum in the museum.

It houses 18 departments (Louvre 8, British Museum 10) which are independent, each has their own acquisitions and maintenance works. American Art, Egyptian Antiquities, Greek and Roman, Medieval Art, Arms and Armor, Costumes, Asian art, Islamic art, European paintings, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Musical Instruments, Arts of Africa, the Pacific and the Ancient America, Art of the twentieth century ...

To each collection its life-sized wonder. For Egyptian antiquities, the temple of Dendour a gift from Egypt to the United States, is remarkable. It was transported and reassembled in a room specially designed by the museum. This temple, built by order of Emperor Augustus, is dedicated to the goddess Isis. For the Roman antiquities, a Pompeian villa has been reconstructed.

The medieval collection is amazing and displays fine tapestries and stained glass. The gallery of medieval armor and weapons exhibits among others, the armor of Henry II, a sixteenth-century Japanese armor or swords Oriental.

On European paintings, the MET has paintings of great masters such as Titian, Veronese, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velasquez, De La Tour, Goya, El Greco or Renoir. Among the 14 paintings exhibited by Van Gogh, “L’Arlesienne” occupies a prominent place. The Romper Claude Monet is also highly rated.