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«Since its debut on January 5, Connections has allowed tens of thousands of viewers to become acquainted with members of our staff. Each episode sparkles with the personality of a narrator who weaves together works of art from the Met's collections, based on a theme that he or she finds particularly inspiring. Our viewers have been inspired as well.

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«On February 6, 1871, a committee of the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art discussed the plan that led to the construction of the Museum's first building at its current site on the east side of New York's Central Park.

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The Met is taking part in the Art Project, which Google launched today at a press conference in London. Seventeen museums from nine countries are currently participating in the Art Project, which can be accessed at www.googleartproject.com. This allows viewers both to explore the museums using Street Views technology and to view one iconic work from each museum's collection in a more in-depth way using state-of-the-art zooming technology.

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Forty years ago this weekend, on January 1, 1971, The Metropolitan Museum of Art first distributed admission buttons, replacing the envelope-sized, two-color tickets that had been used during a transitional period in 1970.

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Velázquez's portrait of Philip IV, king of Spain, went back on view in the European Paintings galleries today after an absence of more than a year, following the completion of a particularly complex restoration.

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I'm pleased to share with you a video that takes you to some of my favorite works of art in our galleries and highlights why the Met belongs to all of us—families, students, scholars—visitors from across our nation and around the globe.

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Our new and improved home page—which has beautiful, rotating images of our special exhibitions and permanent collections—launched today. In addition to listing general information about the Main Building and The Cloisters museum and gardens more prominently, the new design also makes it easy to buy online admission tickets directly from the Museum.

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Thirty-five years ago today, on December 20, 1975, United States President Gerald R. Ford signed into law the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act, which gave the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities the authority to insure international exhibitions that traveled from overseas to U.S. museums. This legislation was a watershed moment in the history of art exhibitions in the United States, making it possible for museums around the world to collaborate with U.S. institutions on traveling loan shows while minimizing insurance costs to the participating institutions.

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For visitors to the Metropolitan, the vast amount of amazing art on display may make it difficult to appreciate the main building's architecture as anything other than a backdrop. However, with a brief introduction, the Museum's rich architectural history comes to life and serves as a valuable complement to its collections.

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In 1989, the World Health Organization designated December 1 World AIDS Day, a day of action and mourning in response to the pandemic. Along with other cultural institutions, the Met continues to participate in an annual observance of the day.

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In eighteen months on the job, I have traveled all over the globe, and it is incredible to understand the scope of the Met's international reach. In fact, I have just returned from a tour of the Met's archaeological work in Egypt, activity that extends back to the earliest days of the Museum.

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On November 21, 1870, The Metropolitan Museum of Art accessioned its first work of art—a Roman marble sarcophagus found in 1863 at Tarsus in Cilicia (modern southern Turkey).

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Forty years ago this weekend, on November 14, 1970, the exhibition Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was the last in a series of five major exhibitions organized over the course of eighteen months (October 1969–February 1971) in celebration of the Museum's centennial.

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Met Director Thomas P. Campbell and Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, announced jointly today that, effective immediately, the Museum will acknowledge Egypt's title to 19 ancient Egyptian objects in its collection since early in the 20th century.

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The Museum announced yesterday that it will undertake a comprehensive, multi-year effort to redesign and rebuild the four-block-long outdoor plaza that fronts its landmark Fifth Avenue facade. The project will feature as one of its centerpiece elements the design and installation of all-new fountains outside the building. Following formal approval of the project at yesterday's meeting of its Board of Trustees, the Metropolitan further announced that it has named OLIN, the award-winning landscape architecture and urban design firm with studios in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, to lead this effort.

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One hundred years ago today, Edward Robinson, curator of classical art and assistant director at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was named the Museum's third director.

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The fall season is in full swing and the Met has never felt more vibrant. Our current exhibitions take our visitors through the full span of history, telling the story of art as no other museum can.

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On October 18, 1880, Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Luigi Palma di Cesnola urged the Museum's Trustees to create an art library that would help fulfill the institution's educational mission.

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Jean Antoine Watteau's Mezzetin is among the Museum's most evocative works. Katharine Baetjer, curator in the Department of European Paintings, spoke with me about this small, striking painting.

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We have just opened a new show, The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, one of the most complex and ambitious exhibitions ever mounted by the Metropolitan Museum.

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In 1996 mosaics were accidentally uncovered during highway construction in the modern Israeli town of Lod, not far from Tel Aviv (see map). Lod is ancient Lydda, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 66 during the Jewish War. Refounded by Hadrian as Diospolis, Lydda was awarded the rank of a Roman colony under Septimius Severus in A.D. 200. It remained in Roman hands until becoming a Christian city and eventually succumbing to Arab conquerors in A.D. 636. The discovery of the mosaics immediately prompted a rescue excavation, undertaken by Miriam Avissar for the Israel Antiquities Authority, which revealed a series of mosaic floors that measured approximately fifty by twenty-seven feet.

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Inside the museum—not just the Met but any art museum—photography has been birthed in hallways. It began to spring from the shoulders of museums' print departments in the 1920s and 1930s, when modernism was making a case for photography as an independent art form. Over the decades it has spread institutionally through the in-between spaces that architecturally mirror the medium's proudly mongrel status as both art and not art.

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INDIA!, an exhibition of the art of India from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century, opened on this day in 1985 as part of a nationwide Festival of India jointly organized by the Government of India and the Indo-U.S. Sub-commission on Education and Culture.

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The Met's permanent collection includes works of art that represent a wide variety of art styles, time periods, and geographic regions in Hispanic and Latin American countries, which makes celebrating these works no small task. But on Saturday, September 25, ¡Fiesta! will do just that.

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On view in the Musical Instruments galleries is an arresting stringed object, an armadillo shell for its back. Ken Moore, the Frederick P. Rose Curator in Charge of Musical Instruments, spoke with me about this work.

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The current exhibition Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950–1980 features candid photographs of New Yorkers, with each of Levinstein's subjects representing a particular neighborhood. In the thirty years since these photographs were taken, New York City's neighborhoods have changed dramatically: new buildings have appeared, businesses have opened or closed, and a new generation has moved in. What would Levinstein see in the people of New York today?

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Two years ago I had the good fortune of being in Florence when, at the Accademia, which every tourist visits for its collection of sculpture by Michelangelo, there was a marvelous exhibition devoted to the great fourteenth-century painter Giovanni da Milano (Italian, Lombard, active 1346–69). I spent hours in the exhibition and it was there that I first saw Christ and Saint Peter; the Resurrection; Christ and Mary Magdalen.

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After days of viewing the entries and hours of narrowing the field, we have chosen four winners of the Teen T-Shirt Design Competition inspired by the special exhibition American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.

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The Museum's Members just received their Summer Bulletin, which details the archaeological excavations in the ancient Near East that have been supported by the Metropolitan from 1931 to 2010. It reminds me that many people don't realize that the Met has been involved in the study of antiquity since the Museum's founding in 1870 (the Met's Egyptian Expedition began in 1906 and continued with extraordinary success for thirty years).

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The signature image of the exhibition Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (closing August 15) is the Seated Harlequin, a masterpiece painted by Picasso when he was just nineteen years old. Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, spoke with me about the painting's imagery and style, as well as recent discoveries made by Metropolitan Museum conservators.

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Among the gorgeous garments on display in the exhibition American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (closing August 15) is an exquisite black evening dress attributed to Madame Marie Gerber of the house of Callot Soeurs. I spoke with Andrew Bolton, curator in the Met's Costume Institute, about the dress's bold design and glamorous, influential owner.

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Summer visitors to the Met have only three more weeks—through Sunday, August 15—to view the popular exhibitions Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.

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John D. Rockefeller Jr. once said, "I can think of nothing so unpleasant as a life devoted to pleasure." How extraordinary, then, that he would create perhaps the most idyllic retreat on the island of Manhattan: The Cloisters Museum and Gardens in Fort Tryon Park.

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I recently posted an article about our twenty-two Summer College Interns (see "New Connections in the Permanent Collection"), and invited you to join us for one of our Highlight Tours or Special Topics Tours. In addition to these undergraduate-led tours, beginning July 23, our twelve Summer Graduate Interns will present Gallery Talks: hour-long lectures exploring single subjects in a carefully selected handful of rooms.

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One hundred years ago today, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the doors of its library's new home to art historians, students, and the general public.

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Each year, the Met holds four meetings at which curators present works of art to a special committee of Trustees for possible purchase by the Museum. It is a thoughtful and rigorous process, and it is always a thrill to see the acquired objects when they finally arrive in our galleries. This past year's purchases included four exquisite works of sculpture spanning from the ancient world to the mid-eighteenth century.

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Attendance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art reached 5,240,000 visitors during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010.

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Exceptional works of art by sixty-nine New York City public school students, ages four to twenty, are on view now through August 8 in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education through P.S. Art, a collaborative program between the New York City Department of Education and Studio in a School Association, Inc. This is the third consecutive year that the Met has hosted the juried exhibition, P.S. Art 2010: Celebrating the Creative Spirit of NYC Kids.

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On July 7, Ringo Starr's seventieth birthday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will inaugurate a special display of his gold-plated snare drum that will remain on view through December 2010 in the Museum's second-floor Musical Instruments Galleries. On loan from Ringo Starr, it was originally presented to him by the Ludwig Drum Company during The Beatles' 1964 visit to Chicago when the legendary rock group was on its first tour of the United States.

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Last May, when the seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth-century period rooms in the "old" American Wing building (1924) reopened after several years of renovation, visitors noticed many changes. Some were huge—we had removed several rooms and moved or replaced others—while some were more subtle, like the new lighting. Still others, like the new air handling, electrical wiring, and fire suppression systems, were nearly invisible to the public. But one major change couldn't be ignored: There were computers in the period rooms!

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During my weekly shifts at the reference desk at the Thomas J. Watson Library, I routinely get asked the same question by inquisitive Museum visitors who pass by our doors: "The Museum has a library?" Over the years, I have learned to treat this as an opportunity to promote the library's collection, services, and resources.

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Eighty-five years ago today, on June 12, 1925, The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a collection of medieval sculpture and architectural fragments from George Grey Barnard (1863–1938), a prominent American sculptor and collector. This acquisition formed the nucleus of what would become The Cloisters, the branch of the Museum located in Northern Manhattan and devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

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Eight curators, five conservators, five research scientists, and eight researchers worked together for nearly a year to create our current exhibition Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and its accompanying catalogue, shedding new light on a subject that one might think had been completely exhausted. Their work revealed many important discoveries, but perhaps none more compelling than the identification of a long-lost painting by the master.

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Since its doors opened in 1938, The Cloisters—the branch of the Met devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe—has been beloved not only for its extraordinary collection of medieval art, but also for its gardens.

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Ever since its inception in the early 1970s, the contemporary Aboriginal art movement in Australia has been continually developing and expanding to embrace an ever widening group of artists, communities, and artistic styles.

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The exhibition Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu (1910–1997) showcases a rich body of material that offers a rare glimpse into the creative process of a traditional Chinese artist. I spoke with Maxwell K. Hearn, Douglas Dillon Curator in the Museum's Department of Asian Art, about Hosta and Asters, one of the many stunning works on view.

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As the Senior Manager for Concerts & Lectures at the Met I am extremely proud of our ability to present amazing programs each year. While many of our readers are familiar with the Museum's program of scholarly lectures, some of you may not realize that the Met also has a long tradition of presenting musical events, including special programs just for families.

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What do you get when you mix a groundbreaking exhibition, a cutting-edge curatorial team, two enthusiastic Museum educators, and a great American fashion company? A T-shirt design competition for teens!

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This beautiful sculpture, a representation of the boy-king Tutankhamun, is among the nearly sixty objects featured in the current exhibition Tutankhamun's Funeral. I spoke with Dorothea Arnold, the Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman of the Department of Egyptian Art, about the significance and style of this work.

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One hundred forty years ago today, on April 13, 1870, the Legislature of the State of New York granted an act of incorporation that formally established The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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We are just a little over a month into the run of The Art of Illumination—the exhibition with the impossibly long subtitle: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Come see it if you haven't already—or if you have, but couldn't get a turn with one of the magnifying glasses we have provided, come back to see the astounding detail in these magical little pictures.

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Each time I stand before this painting I am impressed by the clever way the artist—the most famous female painter of the seventeenth century—has infused a well-known biblical story with her understanding of a gendered society in which women employed beauty and cleverness to gain the upper hand.

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In honor of Women's History Month, I recently spoke with Rebecca Rabinow, associate curator in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, about The Horse Fair, a monumental painting by Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822–1899).

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Last Tuesday, we unlocked the doors of the Musical Instruments galleries, which had been closed for an eight-month hiatus while roof work was performed on the American Wing side of our galleries.

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A major work by the great Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) has just been installed in the landmark exhibition now in progress, The Drawings of Bronzino (on view through April 18, 2010).

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When I first saw 25 Wishes in the Chelsea studio of the artist Ik-joong Kang nearly a year ago, my first thought was how wonderful it would look in the Met's Korean gallery.

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After an eight-month hiatus, The André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments reopen today.

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The substantial collection of Khmer art at the Met comprises pre-Angkor and Angkor freestanding sculptures and architectural elements from Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Like the works gathered in Phnom Penh at the National Museum of Cambodia and in Paris at the Musée Guimet, these works illustrate the birth and evolution of the different Khmer styles and record changes in the sculptural artistic medium through time and across geographical areas.

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When I'm not teaching adults or students in the galleries of the Museum, I develop, plan, and oversee workshops for K–12 teachers designed to introduce educators (and, thus, their students) to great works of art through object-based learning, interdisciplinary integration, and inquiry.

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A rare, recently excavated ancient Roman dining set consisting of twenty silver objects—one of only three such sets from the region of Pompeii known to exist in the world—and an important ancient Greek kylix (or drinking cup) have been installed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Galleries for Greek and Roman Art as part of an ongoing exchange of antiquities between the Republic of Italy and the Museum.

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Every year, the Met welcomes close to twenty thousand family members who participate in more than five hundred special activities.

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American artists Mike and Doug Starn (born 1961) have been invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening to the public on April 27, 2010.

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As the editor of the monthly email newsletter Met News, I have the pleasure of interviewing curators and other experts about works of art from the Museum's collections. More than 113,000 subscribers already receive Met News, but I'm happy to be able to include selected interviews here for an even wider audience. For this month's issue, I interviewed Lisa M. Messinger, associate curator in the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, about Romare Bearden's masterful, mural-size collage The Block.

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Project Runway, the reality television series about fashion design, visited the Met during an episode entitled "The Highs and Lows of Fashion," which debuted on January 28, 2010.

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A daguerreotype by Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros—a work of extraordinary quality and rarity—has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum. Both a depiction and a demonstration of what the medium was capable of at its high point in 1850s Paris, The Salon of Baron Gros shows the interior of a mid-nineteenth-century parlor believed to be that of the baron, with light streaming in from a window at left.

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Many visitors may not realize that the Museum's staff includes ten scientists, with backgrounds in chemistry, biology, geology, or engineering. As part of the Department of Scientific Research, we study the materials and the technologies that were used in creating works of art, and we collaborate with curators and conservators on art historical studies, conservation research, and conservation treatments.

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The Museum announced today that the spring 2011 Costume Institute exhibition will be Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. The exhibition, on view May 4–July 31, 2011, will celebrate the late Mr. McQueen's extraordinary contributions to fashion.

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Earlier this month, the Met acquired its first work by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783), the Austrian sculptor best known for his series of character heads, which are physiognomic and psychological studies.

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Over the past four months, I have been writing posts and responding to comments on a blog dedicated to the special exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915. The exhibition closed last Sunday, but both the blog and a special feature will remain online for those who'd like to revisit the more than one hundred iconic paintings that were included in galleries.

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We've heard from many of you that you enjoy this website and find it to be an exciting, in-depth access point into the Museum's collections, exhibitions, programs, and research. But we've also heard that you would appreciate a single page where you can sample what's on at the Museum right now and what our experts are working on behind the scenes.

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