Metropolitan Museum of Art

The mission of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is to collect, preserve, study, exhibit, and stimulate appreciation for and advance knowledge of works of art that collectively represent the broadest spectrum of human achievement at the highest level of quality, all in the service of the public and in accordance with the highest professional standards. The Lehman Wing becomes first part of master plan to be completed. The major part of the master plan is completed, doubling the museum in size. The Metropolitan Museum of Art ("The Met") is the non-profit organization that is responsible for the operation of one of the world's largest and most comprehensive art museums, visited by approximately five million people each year. Located in Central Park, the Met's two-million-square-foot main building is owned by the city of New York, while the collections are held for the benefit of the public by the corporation's trustees. In addition, the city pays for the museum's heat, light, and power, as well as funding a portion of the costs of maintenance and security. The corporation is responsible for its share of maintenance and security, plus the costs of acquisitions, conservation, special exhibitions, scholarly publications, and educational programs. The Met also receives an annual grant for basic operating expenses from the New York State Council on the Arts. Moreover, it receives funding through gifts and grants, endowment support, paid admissions, the selling of memberships, as well as ancillary income derived from merchandising, parking garage fees, auditorium admissions, and the museum's restaurants. Aside from its Central Park location, the Met owns and operates a branch museum, The Cloisters, located in northern Manhattan, one of the sites of the museum's Department of Medieval Art. Supplementing the Met's gift shop income are 13 satellite retail operations in the United States (with sales from the shop at Rockefeller Center ranking second to the museum itself) and 11 licensed shops around the world. Aside from the usual souvenirs of tee-shirts and postcards, Met merchandise includes expensive reproductions of the artwork found in the museum. Since its founding on the southern tip of Manhattan, New York City has been very much devoted to the making of money. It also grew to harbor aspirations for culture, or at least the accolades that were accorded a cultural center. A strong theatrical tradition was born during the Colonial period, and by the 1840s four different theaters were presenting opera. The Academy of Music, which opened in 1854, would become the hub of fashionable society. When it came to the appreciation of the fine arts, however, New Yorkers showed little interest. At the opera, at least, the wealthy had a venue where it could appreciate itself. The New York Historical Society, founded in 1804, which collected and displayed a limited amount of art, was as close to an art museum as the city had to offer. The only serious collector of American art in New York at the time was a wholesale grocery merchant named Luman Reed, who exhibited the pictures he purchased on the third floor of his home one day a week. After his death in 1841 his collection formed the basis of the New York Gallery of Fine Arts. This early attempt to create an art museum failed to maintain sufficient funding, however, and closed in 1854. The non-profit American Art Union, established on lower Broadway in 1838, provided a place for artists to display their work and charged the public a nominal admission fee. Following legal problems it closed its doors in 1852, but during its short history was instrumental in establishing New York as the country's most important marketplace for American Art. In 1859 the Cooper Union was established in New York for the Advancement of Science and Art. It offered a public reading room where collections of arts and artifacts were displayed, destined one day to become part of the Smithsonian Institution. During this per