The Year 1200: A Symposium

The Centennial celebration of The Metropolitan Museum of Art demonstrated the Museum's extraordinary capacity to present exhibitions that are both scholarly and popular. The Year 1200 exhibition most clearly expresses this ability. This was a distinguished exhibition, drawn from the treasures of museums and collections throughout the world. In their materials luxuriance and their artistic vitality, the objects assembled had an immediate appeal, underscored and heightened by their sensitive and imaginative display.

The Year 1200 symposium provided a unique opportunity for scholars from many different countries to come together in order to study and discuss works of art that had similarly been gathered from all over the world. Many thoughts expressed informally by visitors to the exhibition have not, unfortunately, been recorded. But some of the results of our inquiry appear here in this volume of essays.