Public domainThe Death of Socrates
Jacques-Louis David · 1787
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City · Founded 1870
An Egyptian temple sits indoors, a few rooms from Washington crossing the Delaware. The Met is less a museum than a city block of them.
- 5.7M
- Visitors a year
- 1870
- Founded
- $30
- Admission
- 10–5
- Daily opening hours
28 works from this collection play free on your TV, phone or tablet. Press play and one starts now.
Watch it nowWhat to see
The Met is too large to see in a day, so most first visits pick a wing and stay in it. These are the works and rooms people cross the city for.
The Temple of Dendur
An Egyptian temple of about 15 BC, given by Egypt in 1965 and rebuilt inside a glass hall facing Central Park.
Washington Crossing the Delaware
Leutze painted it in Düsseldorf in 1851; it fills a wall of the American Wing.
The European paintings galleries
Five Vermeers, more than any museum outside the Netherlands, among the Dutch rooms.
The Costume Institute
Dress from the fifteenth century on, shown in changing exhibitions.
The Astor Court
A Ming-style scholar’s garden, built in New York by craftsmen from Suzhou.
The roof garden
A commissioned installation each summer, over the park.
The collections
The Met keeps seventeen curatorial departments across two buildings, from Egyptian antiquities to contemporary dress. The Fifth Avenue building holds most of it; The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park holds the medieval collection.
Egyptian art
Thirty-six thousand objects, including the Temple of Dendur.
European paintings
The thirteenth to the twentieth century, with five Vermeers.
The American Wing
Painting, sculpture and period rooms from the colonial era on.
Asian art
One of the largest holdings in the West, across every major tradition.
Greek and Roman art
Antiquities from the Neolithic through the fall of Rome.
Drawings and prints
Over a million works on paper, shown in rotation.
Photographs
From the earliest experiments to the present.
Artists
The Met has collected on this scale since 1870, and its open-access programme has put hundreds of thousands of images into the public domain. These are the artists you can stream on Momentable.
German · 1471–1528 · German Renaissance
Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance.
France · 1748–1825
Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era.
Japanese · 1760–1849 · Japonisme
Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. His woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji includes the iconic print The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Artworks
Public-domain works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, free to stream.
The Death of Socrates
Jacques-Louis David · 1787
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Katsushika Hokusai · 1830
Melencolia I
Albrecht Dürer · 1514
Afternoon dress
1901
Morning dress
1827
Dress
1837
Shoes
1770
Banyan
1770
Cage crinoline
1880
Plan your visit
Hours
Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday 10:00–17:00, Friday and Saturday until 21:00, closed Wednesday. Confirm on metmuseum.org before you travel.
Admission
$30 adults, $22 seniors, $17 students, free for children 12 and under. New York State residents and students from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut pay what they wish, with a minimum of one cent.
Getting there
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. Subway: 4, 5, 6 to 86th Street.
On their own site
The Open Access collection is at metmuseum.org/art/collection, filtered by public domain.
More guides to explore
Invite Met into your living room
28 works from this collection are available on Momentable, free to view, on your TV, phone, or tablet.
