A generous grant from the family of Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn, through New Tamarind Foundation and Zodiac Fund, will ensure the further growth and development of the Timeline of Art History, a major, evolving feature of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website. This landmark gift is the first endowment to be dedicated to support of an online resource at the Metropolitan Museum. The Timeline, which can be found on the Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org/toah and which has more than 30,000 visitors daily, is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, illustrated principally by the Metropolitan Museum's encyclopedic collection.
"With this new gift – through the foundations of the Heilbrunns' two daughters, Helaine Lerner and Joan Rechnitz – the Metropolitan Museum is now most grateful for the visionary support of not one, but two generations of Heilbrunns," commented Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Museum. "Without their passion for both art and education this innovative resource would not be possible. The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, as it will henceforth be called, is a superb online resource that is unparalleled in its encyclopedic breadth, quality of art-historical information, and wide-ranging use for students, teachers, and the general public alike. The leadership gift establishing this new endowment ensures that the Timeline will continue to expand in scope and depth, and to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship, in order to best serve future generations of visitors to the Web and to the Museum."
The Metropolitan Museum's curatorial, conservation, and education staff – the largest team of art experts anywhere in the world – research and write the Timeline. First launched in 2000 through the foresight and support of Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn, the Timeline now covers the span of art history from prehistory through the present day. It includes more than 6,000 high-quality images of Metropolitan and comparative works of art, 800 thematic essays, 300 timelines, and a comprehensive index, totaling 12,000 web pages.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website (www.metmuseum.org) was first launched in October 1995. In addition to the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, it provides Internet users throughout the world with unprecedented access to the Metropolitan's collections, exhibitions, educational resources, calendar of programs, publications, shops, reproductions, and full range of activities and holdings. The site is visually rich with works of art from the Metropolitan's encyclopedic collection of more than two million works of art, and has special features including exhibition previews, an interactive Museum calendar, Met Net memberships, a Met Podcast series, blogs, monthly e-newsletters, and personalized areas in which visitors can, for example, store images of favorite works of art and create customized calendars. New features and information are added on a continuing basis.
###
October 1, 2008
Press resources