Our collection of ancient Egyptian art , one of the largest and finest in the United States, is renowned throughout the world. Egypt is the oldest continuously documented civilization on the African continent, and our collection, begun in 1902, tells the story of its art from its earliest known origins until the Roman period. The ancient Egyptians were an Indigenous African people whose cultural and artistic origins in the Nile Valley can be traced back over 8,000 years. Joined over five millennia by other Africans from Nubia and Libya, as well as West Asians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, their distinctly multicultural society produced an astonishing array of objects and structures. Our Egyptian galleries contain more than 1,200 objects that include sculpture, reliefs, paintings, pottery, and papyri. On view are such treasures as a gilded wooden statuette of Amunhotep III, an exquisite chlorite head of a Middle Kingdom princess, a statue of queen Ankhnes-meryre holding her son Pepy II, and a terra-cotta statuette of a woman created over 5,000 years ago. Dedicated spaces highlight Tutankhamun’s youth and the city of Amarna, as well as pottery and figurines from ancient Egypt and Nubia . Also included is a newly refreshed funerary gallery that explores rituals and objects related to Egyptian afterlife beliefs. On view are the elaborately decorated coffin and mummy board of Pasebakhaienipet, mayor of Thebes; wall reliefs from the tomb of the vizier Nespeqashuty; several mummified individuals and animals; and a nearly 25-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll. On January 30, 2026, one of the world’s only complete and gilded Books of the Dead joins this space—on public display for the first time.

We house one of America’s foremost collections of Asian art, now displayed in newly renovated galleries. We have completed a multiyear reinstallation that celebrates the great diversity of Asian art by presenting works from Japan, Korea, China, South and Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas, as well as the arts of Buddhism. The Arts of Japan gallery features traditional forms such as paintings, woodblock prints, sculptures, and lacquerwares. We have a large, historical collection of art made by the Ainu people of northern Japan, which is prominent in the gallery, as is our important collection of ceramics by modern and contemporary masters. Among the first U.S. institutions to collect and exhibit Korean art, we hold one of the country’s premier collections. The Arts of Korea gallery offers a full range of traditional ceramic wares as well as fine paintings, costumes, home furnishings, and religious arts. The Arts of China gallery ranges from the Neolithic era (circa 3000 B.C.E.) to today. Objects in a wide variety of mediums reveal the sophistication of Chinese artistry and reflect Chinese religious, political, and intellectual traditions that continue to evolve. The Arts of Buddhism gallery offers an introduction to Buddhism through its art forms, featuring art from multiple Asian cultures. Juxtaposed icons of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other enlightened figures, as well as tools used in worship, illustrate regional variations in practice and aesthetics. Arts of Southeast Asia highlights our collection of historical art from the region, with a primary focus on sculpture depicting Hindu and Buddhist deities. The largest gallery in the suite, Arts of South Asia showcases our important holdings of art from India and surrounding regions, featuring stone sculptures from Hindu and Jain temples. Celebrating a diversity of forms and traditions, the installation includes highlights from our extensive collections of manuscript paintings and early terracotta sculptures as well as decorative objects and architectural elements. The smallest gallery in the suite, Arts of the Himalayas features sculpture and paintings from Nepal, Tibet, and neighboring regions, most of it made for use in Buddhist or Hindu religious practices.

Our holdings of the Arts of the Islamic World represent a wide range of artistic traditions from Islamic cultures located in Asia and Africa, as well as parts of Europe and, more recently, diasporic communities around the world. The objects on view were created over the course of the last fourteen centuries, from the seventh century to today, in a variety of mediums, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, and works on paper. Although most of our collection is historical, the inclusion of modern and contemporary works reflects the dialogue between the past and the present. This presentation is organized around a series of themes that touch on important facets of artistic development within the Islamic world. Separate sections focus on religious arts and secular arts, and highlight the main differences in function and aesthetics. Individual labels provide in-depth explanations of where and when those objects were made. The Religious Art gallery comprises objects that are central to religious spaces and activities, including Qur’ans and mosque furnishings. A highlight is a section devoted to a prayer carpet, which is presented on the ground within a display that features related tiles and mosque furnishings. An accompanying video shows the interior of a mosque during a daily prayer. The galleries devoted to the secular arts are organized around a number of themes: Rulers and Authority, Palatial Surroundings, Fine Dining and Drinking, the Literary World, Personal Luxury, Science and Magic, Nomadic Life, and the Discovery of Raqqa Ceramics by Refugees. In these focused perspectives, objects from different regions or periods appear side by side, showing how these concepts have been interpreted across the Islamic world. In the central gallery is a large and low case displaying ceramic and glass vessels that would have been used by diners seated on carpets or cushions on the ground. We hold the country’s most expansive collection of paintings from the Qajar period in Iran, examples of which are located throughout these galleries.

The decoration of the royal palaces of the ancient Middle Eastern kingdom of Assyria was meant to overwhelm the ancient visitor with the king’s power and to reveal the supernatural world where he existed. The twelve reliefs on view decorated the vast palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II (883–859 B.C.E.), one of the greatest rulers of ancient Assyria. Completed in 879 B.C.E. at a site then called “Kalhu” (modern Nimrud, slightly north of Baghdad, Iraq), they were carved with majestic images of kings, divinities, sacred trees, and magical beings called apkallu , or “genies.” The Assyrians believed that apkallu had survived the primordial flood to serve the king. These winged figures could be either human- or eagle-headed. The archaeological site of Nimrud in Iraq suffered serious damage at the hands of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or DA’ESH) in 2015. Ancient polytheistic images like those displayed here were a particular target. Iraqi forces reconquered the area in 2016.

From ornate parlors to copper cufflinks, from 1850s Gothic Revival to cutting-edge contemporary design, from Burkina Faso to Turin to Saratoga Springs: The Decorative Arts and Design galleries reveal the breadth of this remarkable collection. These works are connected by their role as functional items, yet they range dramatically in style, material, origin, and time. Featuring more than 150 objects, this installation investigates key questions that surround design and decorative arts: Are there differences between works that are handmade or industrially produced? What is considered “craft” or “design”? While probing such definitions, the galleries celebrate the dazzling array of objects that “decorative arts and design” encompasses. Wander from Period Rooms outfitted with lavish furnishings to nearly a dozen thematic vignettes, spotlighting luxurious Art Deco cabinets, rippling Italian plywood, lustrous midcentury jewelry, or even Machine Age appliances. Follow the shifting tides of en vogue styles as the Aesthetic movement advocated beauty in the home, the Arts and Crafts movement countered industrialization, and the advent of plywood spurred a boom in affordable designs. Together these explorations offer a rich history of decorative arts and design, journeying through centuries of global innovation to honor the objects of our every day.

The Brooklyn Museum began collecting and displaying period rooms in 1915. Today, these architectural settings show 17th- through mid-20th-century interiors, focusing on Brooklyn and New York history. Period rooms are complex objects purported to show “the way people lived” at various moments in history. Featuring original architectural interiors and furniture, combined with collection objects, these installations ask us to investigate what is “authentic” and whose narratives are on view—questions that have multiple, shifting responses.

The Dinner Party will be closed August 19–21 and August 26–28. The Dinner Party , an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. Learn about components of The Dinner Party .

A major component of the Luce Center for American Art is the 5,000-square-foot Visible Storage and Study Center. This dense display of objects offers an inside look at how museums work and provides a glimpse of our extensive American collections. As large as our building is, just a small fraction of the permanent collections can be displayed in our gallery space. Whereas only about 350 works are on view in the adjacent American Art installation, this facility gives open access to some 2,000 of the many thousands of American objects held in storage, which are available for viewing and research by students, scholars, and the general public. The Visible Storage and Study Center is a working facility as much as our other storerooms, with works maintained under proper conditions of temperature, humidity, and light levels. Glass-walled bays contain a rotating selection of nearly six hundred paintings on rolling racks. Large glass vitrines hold the majority of our collection of historical (that is, pre-1945) American sculpture. Other vitrines contain objects from the American decorative arts collection, including pewter, commemorative pressed glass, Tiffany glass and lamps, contemporary industrial design and furniture, silver, eighteenth-century furniture, nineteenth-century seating with original upholstery, and Brooklyn-made ceramics. There are also representative displays of Native American and Spanish colonial objects. Three areas are devoted to small exhibitions that change periodically and provide focused examinations of different art historical themes or aspects of the permanent collections. Although this is an operating storage facility, we have designed it to be welcoming and user friendly. Accompanied by informational booklets, selected “focus objects” are displayed on colored shelves, in cases, and on the painting screens. There is a searchable online database , also available in the Visible Storage and Study Center.

Mark your calendar for a reframing of how American museums present and celebrate African art. The Brooklyn Museum is home to one of the country’s largest and most renowned Arts of Africa collections. In fall 2027, following years of study, planning, and conservation, this dynamic collection goes on public view in transformed collection galleries. More than 300 works, spanning antiquity to today, will be showcased in a 6,400-square-foot wing that reflects the continent’s fluidity and complexity in both concept and design. And for the first time, the Arts of Africa galleries will join seamlessly with those dedicated to Egyptian art—connecting the entire continent and offering a panoramic perspective of Africa’s artistic legacy. By entering these revitalized spaces, which range in scale from soaring to intimate, you’ll recognize Africa’s global impact. Follow the movement of people, ideas, and materials along the continent’s corridors, whether the Sahara desert or the Atlantic Ocean, to trace the deep interconnections among African cultures and the world. Throughout this journey, you’ll encounter such highlights as Ethiopian qäqwami mäsqälät (processional crosses), a Yorùbá paka egúngún (masquerade costume), and one of the oldest Kuba ndop figures. Rich with storytelling and striking sight lines, the installation presents works from across the continent and its vibrant diaspora, illuminating centuries of creativity from ancient Egypt to contemporary New York.

After Matilda Geddings Gray died in 1971, her collection passed to the foundation she had established, with the stipulation that a broad public should be able to enjoy it.

Giovanni della Robbia’s Renaissance glazed terracotta masterpiece The Resurrection of Christ is a compositional and technical tour de force. The massive relief sculpture, comprised of forty-six pieces, portrays a vision of faith and salvation unfolding amid a vibrant cornucopia of naturalistic plants, flowers, and animals. The Resurrection was commissioned around 1520 by the Antinori family, historical Tuscan vintners since 1385, to adorn a wall of their villa outside Florence, Italy. Almost four hundred years later, in 1899, it became the first Italian Renaissance work to enter our collection. Since the late 1990s the large, colorful relief sculpture has not been on public view. The restoration in 2015 of della Robbia’s vibrant masterwork by our conservation team was generously funded by the same Antinori family whose ancestors originally commissioned it. The restoration is highlighted in a video accompanying this focused look at one of our most significant works of European art. The Brooklyn Della Robbia is curated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art.

The re-opening of The Met's British Galleries is one of the highlights of the Museum's 150th anniversary.

Seneca Village, a 19th-century Black community in today’s Central Park, was displaced in 1857. The exhibit imagines its thriving future through Afrofuturism, art, and storytelling.

Located in the Museum’s Egyptian galleries, this installation focuses on ancient Egypt and Nubia as African civilizations, challenging racist and colonial assumptions of early Western archaeologists. Examples of pottery and figurines, made more than five thousand years ago, reveal a common origin of the two civilizations on the African continent. Objects such as headrests and sistra further demonstrate close ties between Egypt and other African cultures. The display also highlights the important contributions of W. E. B. Du Bois, William Leo Hansberry, and Pauline Hopkins, three of the many African American scholars who recognized and published on Egypt and Nubia as African civilizations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period when the field of “mainstream” Egyptology rejected this notion.

This installation fills The Met’s Great Hall with giant Qing porcelain images, blending Asian art and architecture to reshape how visitors see the space.

Growing Up Tutankhamun marks the centennial of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb (November 4, 1922) by reuniting a newly gifted relief block with an existing pastoral scene in the galleries. The four adjoined reliefs once decorated the royal palace where Tutankhamun grew up. The pastoral scene reveals the unique style of the Amarna Period, which introduced naturalistic imagery, previously unparalleled in Egyptian art. The installation offers a glimpse of Tutankhamun’s family and the extraordinary art that decorated the city of Amarna during the king’s childhood. Sculptural representations of Nefertiti and Kiya, both wives of King Akhenaten, explore Tutankhamun’s royal lineage and comment on the debate regarding the identity of his mother, using the latest research on this topic. Faience and fresco palace decorations reveal the colorful splendor of Amarna Period palaces and court life.

This display of two rare Hebrew manuscripts highlights Jewish, Christian, and humanist cultural exchange in the 15th century.

This exhibit showcases historic and contemporary Native American art from 50+ groups across 7 regions, highlighting rich traditions amid colonialism and change.

The redesigned Northern Renaissance gallery showcases highlights and new acquisitions, placing The Met’s collection in early modern northern Europe.

Reopened galleries of European Paintings (1300–1800) highlight new narratives and dialogues among 700+ works from the Museum’s collection.