the largest and most comprehensive art museum in New York City and one of the foremost in the world. The museum was incorporated in 1870 and opened two years later. The complex of buildings at its present location in Central Park opened in 1880. The main building facing Fifth Avenue, designed by William Morris Hunt (Hunt, William Morris), was completed in 1902. McKim, Mead and White designed certain later additions. The American section, added in 1924, included the 1823 marble facade saved from the demolished U.S. Branch Bank on Wall Street. The remainder of the 20th-century additions were completed by the architectural firm of Kevin Roche (Roche, Kevin) John Dinkeloo and Associates. These included the Robert Lehman Wing (1975), with its Old Masters, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist works; the Sackler Wing of the Temple of Dendur (1978), which houses a monument given by Egypt; the American Wing (1980), a four-acre addition that was wrapped around the old section and contains the largest collection of American arts in the world; the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (1982), which houses the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (1987), which displays modern art; and the Henry R. Kravis Wing (1990), which contains sculpture and decorative arts of Europe up to the early 20th century.

The Metropolitan Museum has important collections of Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Far and Near Eastern, Greek and Roman, European, Pre-Columbian, New Guinean, Islamic, and American art including architecture, sculpture, painting, drawings, calligraphy, prints, photographs, glass, bronzes, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, lacquerwork, furniture, period rooms, arms and armour, and musical instruments.

The Thomas J. Watson (Watson, Thomas J., Sr.) Library, built in 1964 primarily for the use of the museum staff and visiting scholars, has one of the most complete art and archaeology reference collections in the world. It is the largest of a network of dedicated libraries in the museum, but only the Nolen Library is open to the public.

European art of the Middle Ages is found on display in both the Central Park complex and The Cloisters (Cloisters, The), the Metropolitan's museum of medieval art in Fort Tryon Park.