The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collection includes more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. Il Met acquisì un primo lotto di antichità peruviane nel 1882, ma non iniziò ad occuparsi veramente di opere africane, oceaniche e del resto delle Americhe fino al 1969, quando l'uomo d'affari e filantropo Nelson A. Rockefeller donò al museo la sua collezione personale, che comprendeva più di 3.000 pezzi. When The Met was founded in 1870, it owned not a single work of art. Through the combined efforts of generations of curators, researchers, and collectors, our collection has grown to represent more than 5,000 years of art from across the globe—from the first cities of the ancient world to the works of our time. The Met vs MOMA. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. the Met and the Museum of Modern Art, i.e. MOMA are both excellent museums in New York City. But sometimes due to lack of time and inclination, one is forced to compare and choose one of the two.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments.