METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

largest and most comprehensive art museum in New York City and one of the foremost in the world. The museum was incorporated in 1870 and opened two years later. The complex of buildings at its present location in Central Park opened in 1880. The main building facing Fifth Avenue, designed by William Morris Hunt, was completed in 1902. McKim, Mead and White designed certain later additions. The American section, added in 1924, included the 1823 marble facade saved from the demolished U.S. Branch Bank on Wall Street. The American Wing, a four-acre addition, was wrapped around the old section in 1980 by architects Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and associates, who had also designed the Lehman Wing in 1975, the Michael C. Rockefeller and Sackler wings in 1978, and a projected European wing. The Metropolitan Museum has important collections of Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Far and Near Eastern, Greek and Roman, European, Pre-Columbian, New Guinean, and American art including architecture, sculpture, painting, drawings, prints, glass, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, furniture, period rooms, arms and armour, and musical instruments. It has a Costume Institute and a Junior Museum. The Thomas J. Watson Library, built in 1964, has one of the most complete art and archaeology reference collections in the world. European art of the Middle Ages is found on display in both the Central Park complex and The Cloisters, the Metropolitan's museum of medieval art in Fort Tryon Park. The building, which opened in 1938, is made up of parts of medieval monasteries and churches.