With more then two million individual works of art spanning over 5,000 years of world history, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most extensive and impressive collections of art in the country – and some would say the world. As a New York institution since its opening in 1870 and a world landmark since it arrived on posh 5th Avenue inside Central Park ten years later, The Met is currently visited by about five million people every year… and for good reason.

No museum can match its collection of American Art – from Thomas Eakins to Jackson Pollock and Mary Cassatt to Georgia O’Keeffe – and few European Museums can beat its European collection with some of the most renowned Rembrandts and Vermeers in the world. You can only hope to see a more extraordinary collection of Egyptian art if you are in Cairo. And beyond that there is so much more including the Asian art, photography, famous armory (King Henry VIII ring a bell?), and the costume institute for which Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour hosts the legendary Met Gala each May. Permanent collection and current exhibitions aside, the Met is one of the most spectacular buildings in the city and is worth a visit if even just to sit on the famous steps to people watch.

The bottom line is this: whatever genre or period or unusual and unheard-of category of art it is that you are looking for, they will have it here at The Met.

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