The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide

Előszó

INTRODUCTION
The Metropolitan Museum is a living encyclopedia of world art. Every culture from every part of the world— from Florence to Thebes to Papua New Guinea—from the earliest times to the present and in every medium is represented, frequently at the highest levels of quality and invention. The Metropolitan's 1.4 million square feet houses what is in fact a collection of collections; several of its departments could and would be major independent museums almost anywhere else. But here musical instru-ments adjoin arms and armor, and forty thousand Egyp-tian objects are displayed on the floor directly above a collection of forty-five thousand costumes.
A guide to the Museum's immense holdings—more than three million works of art, of which several hundred thousand are on public view—can only be the briefest of anthologies. Through a selection of some of the finest works in every department we have attempted to give a balanced picture of the collection. Inevitably many legitímate candidates had to be excluded, and it is no empty boast to say that the guide could have been twice as long with scarcely a loss of quality or éclat in the works presented. For example, out of more than thirty paintings by Monet we show four, and only fifty-five examples of Greek and Roman art must stand for the thousands of objects in that department's galleries. And how many museums could omit three works by so rare and supreme a painter as Vermeer while still including three?
The difficulty we faced in these choices makes it clear that the works of art reproduced here are only signposts to direct and introduce the visitor to the vari-ous parts of the Metropolitan. I hope those who come to the Museum often wlll use this book to plan their visits, creatlng itineraries to suit a time or a mood (they may find, as I have, that a short, focused visit is per-haps the most rewarding way to experience the Museum). This guide can, of course, be used as a basis for a tour of highllghts, serving as an articúlate compan- Vissza