A New Yorker’s Guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: It’s too easy to think of this New York City institution as the city’s version of the “fancy” (read: sit-down) restaurant in your college town that you took mom and dad to for lunch on parents weekend to prove how grown-up freshman year had made you.

“Look, Ma and Pa: Moving to New York has made me sophisticated and cultured!”

But unlike the insipid and stale gougères at Rowdy Robb’s Rathskeller Palace & Beer, the Met — besides being a great place to take your judgmental folks when they’re in town — is also a genuinely great place to go whether you’re a tourist or a local with a free afternoon and no one to impress.

I’ve visited the Met regularly throughout the decades I’ve lived in this city, including accompanying my goddaughter’s annual birthday pilgrimage to say hello to the Alberto Giacometti cat (not currently on display). Here’s the skinny on this great American museum, including where to get the taxicab chicken tenders for the kids.

Facts About the Met

Founded in 1870, the Met is the most visited museum in the U.S., the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth-largest museum in the world. About 5.4 million people visited in 2023, or about the entire population of Slovakia.

Not counting the Cloisters, its medieval-themed outpost in Fort Tryon Park (worth its own full day), the Met covers about 2 million square feet and contains 2 million pieces of art ranging from ancient Egypt to the modern day from every corner of the earth, all meticulously curated by 17 departments of the museum.

As with any museum, the vast majority of the permanent collection is out of sight in storage or restoration. What you see is just a hint at the vastness of the museum’s holdings, which are regularly rotated to meet the demands of seasonal and varying exhibits, to help preserve the items, and to suit the public’s constantly changing tastes and interests.

Collections at the Met’s main building include ancient Near Eastern; Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; ancient American art; Asian; Egyptian; Old Master paintings; plein air, impressionist, and postimpressionist paintings; European sculpture and decorative arts; the American Wing; ancient Greek and Roman art; Islamic art; arms and armor; the Museum of Costume Art; the once-private Robert Lehman Collection; drawings and prints; musical instruments; photographs; and medieval art.

There’s simply no way to go over every collection the museum has to offer without turning this brief guide into an encyclopedic detour, so in this article, we’ll skip the Cloisters and cover a few of the more popular attractions in broader terms.

If you truly want to see everything on display at the Met on any given day, you should give yourself at least 2 full days, or more if you want to linger and spend more time with some exhibits.

Hot Tip:

When people talk about “the Met,” they could be talking about either the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Metropolitan Opera, both beloved artistic institutions with long, storied histories in New York City. But unless you know the person you’re speaking to is an opera fan, chances are they’re talking about the museum.

The Met’s Location

The Met sits on the eastern side of Central Park in Manhattan, lording over a long stretch of Fifth Avenue from E. 80th Street to E. 84th Street. For most people, the easiest way to get to it is via the subway. You can take the 4, 5, or 6 train to 86th Street and then walk the 3 blocks west to Fifth Avenue — that’s the easiest and nearest station.

Otherwise, you can take the M1, M2, M3, or M4 bus down Fifth Avenue and get off at E. 82nd Street from the north, or up Madison Avenue and get off at E. 83rd Street from the south. If you’re on the other, western side of Central Park, you can take the M86 crosstown bus to Fifth Avenue from 86th Street, or the M79 bus from W. 81st Street and Central Park West — it goes across the park and can also let you off at Fifth Avenue.

The museum has an underground garage at its southern end at E. 80th Street. It’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and charges $25 for the first hour and $60 for a full 24 hours if you don’t have a museum membership. There’s also a less obvious entrance to the museum down here that’s always much less crowded than the line up the stairs out front. For years, this was the “secret” fast way into the museum, and though it’s gotten more crowded as more people have caught on, it’s still usually a better bet than the main entrance.

Admission to the Met

As always, the easiest and most painless way to gain admission to this museum, as with most museums these days, is to reserve a time and buy tickets ahead of time online.

Note that residents of New York state and students from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut can pay what they wish, but they must pay something, even if it’s only a penny. For others, general admission is $30 ($22 for seniors over 65 and those with disabilities, $17 for students). Kids under 12 and people acting as caregivers for those with disabilities get in free.

Hot Tip:

Museums, including the Met, typically code as entertainment when it comes to credit card purchases. Check out our guide to the best credit cards for entertainment, which features cards such as the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card and The Platinum Card^® from American Express.

The Met also participates in the Bank of America Museums on Us program, which offers free admission to Bank of America cardholders on the first full weekend of each month.

The Met is open Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Friday and Saturday, it’s open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Met is closed on Wednesday.

The Met has a free coat check but doesn’t accept luggage, oversized bags, or backpacks, which are also not allowed into the museum.

You’re allowed to bring the following into the Met:

• Small backpacks worn on your front or carried in hand
• Water (but no other liquids) in a secure bottle
• Strollers and front-facing baby carriers are welcome (in most exhibitions)
• Mobility scooters
• Pencils
• Service dogs

You are not allowed to bring the following into the Met:

• Large bags, luggage, musical instruments, electronics, and overly large camera equipment
• Glass containers, jars, aerosol cans, and liquids other than water
• Food and drink besides water in an appropriate container
• Large objects, such as flags, banners, frames, artwork, shopping carts, sporting goods, and recreational equipment
• Marking materials, paint, adhesives, epoxies, or glues (pencils are allowed)
• Pets or emotional support animals
• Firearms, weapons, or hazardous materials
• Oversized strollers, jogging strollers, wagons, bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates, rollerblades, ice skates, helmets, and scooters
• Selfie sticks, tripods, monopods, drones, and professional video equipment that hasn’t been approved ahead of time by the Met
• Plants and flowers
• Craft or utility knives, tools, screwdrivers
• Costumes, including masks that cover the full face
• Any other item that could put the art or visitors at risk, at the discretion of the Met security team

If you’re an artist looking to set up an easel in the Met, check out the museum’s copyist program, which accepts artists in an 8-week program to work in the galleries. Outside of the program, any visitor is allowed to sketch inside the Met, but they must use a pencil only.

Tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met is both vast and densely packed, so expect to find it overwhelming, even if you’ve been there before (I still get lost). Luckily, the Met offers free tours on various themes and in various languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, German, Korean, Japanese, and so on).

These typically hourlong tours either cover museum highlights or specific areas of interest (e.g., Islamic art, European paintings, arts and armor, fashion in art, ancient Egypt, etc.) and meet at a specific time and place. Check the Met’s free tours page to find a tour that interests you on the day of your visit. The tour groups can only accommodate a certain number of people and are generally first-come, first-served.

Note that the Met’s tours are totally free and led by volunteer docents who don’t expect a tip. If you have a group of at least 10 people, you can contact the museum for a private tour by a museum educator or volunteer. Make sure to make your request through the visit request page at least 3 weeks before your visit.

Children’s programs include classes that examine art and let kids ages 2 and up work on art of their own. Classes start at $455, depending on your level of membership at the Met.

The Met doesn’t offer audio tour devices, but you can download audio tours from the museum website and listen to them on your own cellphone, tablet, or similar gadget. In early 2025, the rotating audio tours on the site included guides to American photography from 1839 to 1910, iconic German romantic landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich (think men in morning coats atop cliffs overlooking raging seas), a feminist look at chinoiserie, and Native American arts. Permanent audio tours include highlights of the Fifth Avenue Met, the British galleries, a family tour of Egyptian art, abstract art from Jackson Pollock to Carmen Herrera, musical instruments, and others.

You can also book tours of the Met via a private company not affiliated with the museum or as part of a tour package with your trip provider. What you pay, how long the tour lasts, what it covers, and other details are things you need to work out separately with the specific tour provider. Groups led by third parties of any size have to submit a request at least 3 weeks in advance — reputable tour companies will have taken care of this well before arrival.

Ancient Art

The museum has been collecting ancient art from various civilizations since its beginning. The very first piece that the Met officially acquired, in fact, was an ancient Roman sarcophagus. In 2007, the Met greatly expanded its exhibit spaces for ancient Roman and Greek art, so now most of that collection is publicly displayed.

Among the ancient art to look out for are an ancient Etruscan chariot and an entire ancient Roman bedroom of a wealthy family that had been completely covered in ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The ancient arts are generally divided into Greek and Roman artwork, ancient American art, ancient Near Eastern art, and ancient Egypt. The collection also includes the popular Temple of Dendur.

The Temple of Dendur, though it was dedicated to the goddess Isis and originally built on the west bank of the Nile, was actually commissioned by Rome’s Emperor Augustus as part of his plan to consolidate power over his Egyptian holdings after defeating Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra and her Roman lover Mark Antony. (Go read or watch “I, Claudius,” which will be more entertaining than my description of the real-life soap opera that was this period in history.)

When Egypt drew up plans for the Aswan Dam, it became clear that flooding the dam would destroy many invaluable historical artifacts, including the temple. Egypt gave the temple to the U.S. as a thank you for its conservation efforts, a gift first lady Jacqueline Kennedy officially received on the country’s behalf.

After a competition among America’s leading museums to become its new home, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the temple to the Met, which built an indoor space that was hot enough and dry enough to preserve the sandstone structure. Until recently, its home was known as the Sackler Wing, a name that’s been scrubbed from the museum because of the Sackler family’s role in this country’s opioid crisis.

If you just wander aimlessly around the museum, you’re likely to spend a lot of time among the ancient artwork. You don’t have to be up on your Thucydides or Herodotus to get what’s going on, though — every piece is fairly well described and explained by the nearby notes from the curators.

American Wing

Obviously, as America’s premier museum of art, the Met ensures that American artwork is well-represented. The showstopper may be Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which dominates the room it’s in.

Painted in 1851 by the German-born artist, it was an instant hit both in Europe and the U.S. and helped fuel the revolutionary feeling spreading throughout Leutze’s home country at the time. Notably, among the subjects in Leutze’s romanticized, heroic depiction is a Black man, believed by many to be the Revolutionary War figure Prince Whipple, an African-born enslaved soldier who fought alongside his owner for America’s freedom from Great Britain but didn’t receive his own freedom until 1784.

The American Wing also houses works from the 18th century through the modern day, including Thomas Anschutz’s “A Rose.”

Other significant pieces include Old West sculptures and paintings by Frederic Remington, who played a huge part in defining the way we picture the Western frontier, cowboys, and Native Americans.

Diana, by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and commissioned by legendary (and notorious) architect Stanford White for his Madison Square Garden, is perched in a prominent spot in the American Wing.

The Met has made a point of highlighting works by African American, Latin American, and Native American artists, including highlighting Native American perspectives of famous pieces like Remington’s The Bronco Buster.

European Art

The Met is home to a significant collection of European art, including a number of works by the Old Masters (Van Dyck, Jordaens, Poussin, etc.), impressionist and postimpressionist paintings (Degas, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Seurat, Gauguin, Toulouse-Latrec, Cézanne, etc.), and Renaissance sculptures. Important and popular works include “The Dance Class” by Degas and “Bathers” by Cézanne.

Among these is Picasso’s portrait of legendary American writer Gertrude Stein, which he did when he was still a struggling artist in Paris. He had already completed his blue period and was entering his rose period, which was the first step toward cubism. Stein became one of Picasso’s patrons and friends after they met, providing invaluable resources at a critical time in the artist’s career.

Modern and Contemporary Artists

The Met’s modern art collection includes around 13,000 pieces in a 60,000-square-foot space. Among the American and European artists represented are Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Amedeo Modigliani. (You’ll notice that the various exhibits can overlap and flow into each other, depending on factors like themes, curatorial decisions, ever-changing definitions and public perceptions, reasons connected to the specific histories of the collections and acquisitions, and so on.)

At one point during your tour of the modern art wing, you’ll probably be confronted by Modigliani’s portrait of fellow artist, romantic partner, and mother of his child Jeanne Hébuterne in the painting of the same name, alongside a bust of her. The painting’s a snapshot of a personal and loving moment in a tragic relationship — Modigliani helped inspire the cliche of the self-destructive, hard-drinking, drug-abusing artist who couldn’t be sober to create good art. His excessive lifestyle led to his death at the age of 35. A pregnant Hébuterne jumped out of a 5-story window 2 days later. They’re now buried next to each other in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

International Art

I know, the concept of grouping together something with the name of “international art” is so general to be laughable (and offensive), but it’s simply not practical to go in-depth with the Met’s vast collections here.

The museum has over 11,000 pieces of art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas from 3000 B.C. to today in the Rockefeller Wing, including 40,000-year-old Australian rock paintings. Asian art has its own wing covering 4,000 years of every major Asian civilization from Chinese calligraphy to Indian textiles. The Islamic art collection is considered one of the largest and finest in the world, with over 12,000 pieces, including a lavishly decorated page from a Quran in what is now Iran from 1137 A.D.

Though the Met’s medieval pieces are mostly in the Cloisters, the parade of knights has been a popular centerpiece of the museum’s arms and armor gallery for 50 years. It features armored suits from the Middle Ages atop armored horses as if on their way to a joust.

Food and Beverages

There are, depending on the season, 7 places to eat at the Met, from highbrow to … let’s just call it family-friendly. And, of course, there are plenty of quick-bite cafes for sandwiches and caffeine to fuel the art-appreciating fervor of the tens of thousands who flow through the museum each day. Some of the cafes have themed menus showcasing Mediterranean, Asian, or American cuisine.

The fanciest public place to eat in the Met is the Met Dining Room, a table-service restaurant with views of Central Park and relatively elevated fare like duck confit and lobster with Calabrian chiles and Meyer lemon. Reservations are required, and it’s only open for dinner on Friday and Saturday.

The members-only Balcony Lounge also requires a reservation. It has table service and a seasonal menu (think charcuterie and cheese boards).

On the museum’s roof, the Cantor Roof Garden Bar offers simple fare like sandwiches, chips, wine, beer, and cocktails, but alfresco and with a fantastic view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. It’s only open during the warmer months and can close suddenly because of the weather (because, y’know, it’s outdoors).

OK, now the only part that anyone with little kids cares about. The Eatery, aka the Met cafeteria with the chicken tenders, burgers, and pizza, is on the ground floor in a cavernous, windowless space that you have to take an elevator or the stairs of the Robert Lehman Collection (the square fountain room with the 4 staircases) down to.

One side of the Eatery is made up of a series of food stations (pizza, burgers, sandwiches, etc.) that flank buffet and salad bar islands, with open drink coolers and grab-and-go salads and wraps opposite the manned food stations. In other words, it’s a cafeteria.

The cashiers separate this area from the dining room, which includes tables in the usual configurations. Finding an empty table big enough for your group isn’t usually a problem, but this is a good place to utilize the leave-the-kids-and-jackets-behind-as-table-savers strategy.

There’s usually an ice cream cart set up by the entrance and exit to the Eatery.

For a while, the Met cafeteria stopped carrying its taxicab kids meal — chicken tenders, fries, and a kids drink in a paper tray shaped like a classic New York City yellow Checker Cab (which doesn’t exist anymore unless you’re renting it for a movie or an event). When the taxi tray vanished from the Met, a lot of kids were disappointed. I’m glad to report that, as of early 2025, at least, the taxicab kids meal is back.

Hot Tip:

Living and staying in New York City is expensive. Getting there doesn’t have to be. Read up on this story about getting to the Big Apple using points and miles.

Final Thoughts

I’ve written before about New York City attractions whose popularity with out-of-town tourists baffles many other New Yorkers and me (namely, Rockefeller Center, which is kind of like if your office building in Spokane got millions of visitors each year to gawk at your company’s holiday party decorations).

Well, the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn’t one of those what-are-the-tourists-thinking places. It’s arguably the shining jewel in America’s museum network, an unparalleled center for art appreciation, historical research, human knowledge and achievement, and the acquisition of chicken tender meals mimicking obsolete modes of transportation.

In other words, whether you spend a day or a week at the Met, this is the museum that should be the centerpiece of your next visit to New York City.