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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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