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Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York

February 6, 2012 by · Comments Off on Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York 

Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially The Met) is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan’s Museum Mile, is one of the world’s largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at “The Cloisters” in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art.

Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met’s galleries.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.

As of 2007, the Met measures almost 1â?„4-mile (400 m) long and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2).

Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York

December 27, 2011 by · Comments Off on Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York 

Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New YorkMetropolitan Museum Of Art, New York, Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is getting an upgrade after more than 40 years on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing.

The painting returns to public view Jan. 16 freshly restored, surrounded by an elaborate new frame and in a more prominent location.

The museum acquired the 149-by-255-inch painting — its largest — in 1897. It has been displayed in the American Wing since the 1970s. After a year of restoration, it will be placed in the new American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Experts removed a brown-gray haze that covered the entire painting, revealing signatures believed to be those of Leutze’s assistants.

The Met had displayed the painting in a plain gold frame in an effort to not distract from patriotic image, Met spokesman Harold Holzer said. But the thinking changed after a museum staff member doing research at the New-York Historical Society about five years ago came across an image of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” when it was displayed in 1864 during the Civil War.

“This photograph revealed that the original frame was ornate — a thick gold frame with an American eagle on top and the words ‘First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of His Countrymen’ across the top,” Holzer said.

The museum commissioned framemaker Eli Wilmer of Manhattan to recreate that frame, he said. The ornate frame is gold plated, with shields, cannons, flag poles and other objects. Holzer declined to provide the cost of the project.

Leutze began work on the painting in his native Germany in 1848, and he and his assistants completed it in 1850. Leutze painted a full-size copy and sent it to the United States in 1851.

In 1897, private collector John S. Kennedy bought the painting for the then-large sum of $16,000 and donated it to the Met. The museum displayed it until 1950 and then loaned it to other museums until 1970, when it was returned.

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