Metropolitan Museum reopens 45 galleries of European Painting, 1300s to 1800s, after five years

After five years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has reopened to the public the galleries devoted to European painting from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The forty-five galleries were renovated following a major infrastructure project to replace the skylights, as over the past seventy years the large overhead skylights that let natural light into the galleries had deteriorated, necessitating their replacement. This work improved the quality of light and thus the visibility of the works and also solved basic maintenance problems.

Started in 2018, the intervention involved more than 2780 square meters of exhibition space, including the complete rearrangement of the galleries.

The galleries display more than seven hundred works of art arranged chronologically: masterpieces long present in the large collection have been retained, and, according to the institution’s intentions, it has been decided to give more attention to women artists, to highlight new narratives and dialogues, to explore Europe’s complex relationships with New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru, and to examine more deeply the narratives of class, gender, race, and religion.

Masterpieces of European painting featured in these dedicated galleries include Andrea Mantegna’sAdoration of the Shepherds, Edgar Degas’s Dance Lesson, Guercino’s Samson Captured by the Philistines, Caravaggio’s Musicians, Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid, Henri Rousseau’s The Lion’s Meal, Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, Jan Vermeer’s Young Woman with Pitcher of Water, Hans Memling’sAnnunciation, Georges de La Tour’s The Penitent Magdalene, and Titian’s Venus and Adonis,

Metropolitan Museum reopens 45 galleries of European Painting, 1300s to 1800s, after five years

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