Short answers, pulled from the story.
The New York State Legislature granted an Act of Incorporation to establish a Museum and Library of Art in New York City on the 13th of April 1870. Founders included businessmen, financiers, artists, and thinkers such as Theodore Roosevelt Sr., Henry Gurdon Marquand, John Taylor Johnston, George Palmer Putnam, Eastman Johnson, and Frederic Edwin Church.
The museum first opened to the public on the 20th of February 1872 at 681 Fifth Avenue before moving to Central Park land between East Park Drive and 79th to 85th Street. The current main building measures over 2 million square feet and received city landmark designation in 1967 for its interior and again in 1986 as a National Historic Landmark.
The permanent collection spans seventeen curatorial departments covering global art history from ancient Egypt to contemporary works with more than 2 million works existing within these divisions. Key departments include Egyptian art with over 26,000 pieces, Asian art holding more than 35,000 pieces, European paintings numbering over 2,625 works, and Costume Institute maintaining over 35,000 costumes and accessories.
The Metropolitan Museum recorded five million seven hundred twenty-seven thousand two hundred fifty-eight visitors in 2024 making it the most visited museum United States and fourth-most visited globally according to The Art Newspaper the 16th of September 2025 report. Admission policy changed January 2018 charging twenty-five dollars out-of-state and foreign visitors while New York state residents pay what they wish.
The museum temporarily closed during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 marking the first closure exceeding three consecutive days in over a century. This event occurred after financial setbacks reported September 2016 included outstanding debts approaching forty million dollars plus two hundred fifty million bond debt leading to indefinite postponement six-hundred-million-dollar architectural expansion planned for modern art collection.