The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens--businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day--who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired its first object, a Roman sarcophagus, in 1870, before it even had a building to exhibit it in. The collections continued to grow for the rest of the nineteenth century. In 1873 the purchase of the Cesnola Collection excavated on the island of Cyprus established a firm foundation for the collection of antiquities. The Museum acquired two works by Edouard Manet in 1889; today the Museum has one of the world's great collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

It is the twentieth century that has seen the Museum became one of the world's great art centers. Some highlights: A work by Renoir entered the Museum as early as 1907. In 1910 the Met was the first public institution in the world to accept a work of art by Matisse. The Department of Greek and Roman Art now oversees thousands of objects, including one of the finest collections of ancient glass and silver in the world. The American Wing displays the most comprehensive collection of American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts in the world. The Egyptian art collection is the finest outside of Cairo and the Islamic art collection is exceptionally comprehensive.

Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an encyclopedia of world art. Every culture from every part of the world--from Florence, Italy, to Papua, New Guinea--from the earliest times to the present and in every medium, is represented.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Photo Frame collection calls upon these tremendous archives and treasures to create pieces of sculpture to enhance your prints and adore as "living" gifts.

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