Items13The creator’s order
  1. 1William (hippopotamus figurine)William (hippopotamus figurine)Gallery 111 Warm up with the smallest celebrity in the building. William is a blue faience hippo about 8 inches long, made in Egypt's Middle Kingdom nearly 4,000 years ago, and he sits in the Egyptian galleries you walk through on the way to the temple. Two minutes with him shows how lively and…0
  2. 2Temple of DendurTemple of DendurGallery 131 The one stop nobody should skip. This is a real sandstone temple, completed by 10 BCE, that Egypt gave to the United States in 1965 and that came to the Met in 1967. You can walk right up to the gateway and the temple itself, with the carved walls at eye level, while a huge wall of…0
  3. 3Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851 paintings)Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851 paintings)Emanuel Leutze's 1851 version, Gallery 760 Pictures in textbooks do not prepare you for the size. The canvas is roughly 12 feet tall and 21 feet wide, so Washington and his crew loom over the room like a movie screen, set in a reproduction of the painting's original grand frame. Stand back first…0
  4. 4Portrait of Madame XPortrait of Madame XGallery 771 Close to Washington, John Singer Sargent's portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau caused a scandal at the 1884 Paris Salon. The slipped shoulder strap, the heavy makeup and her cool indifference to the viewer drew ridicule in the press, and Sargent later repainted the strap into…0
  5. 5Francis W. Little House IIFrancis W. Little House IIFrank Lloyd Wright's living room from the house, Gallery 745 The Met took the whole living room Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the Little family's house in Minnesota and rebuilt it inside the American Wing. It is nearly 48 feet long, lined in oak, with bands of leaded-glass windows, built in 1912…0
  6. 6The Met Fifth AvenueThe Met Fifth AvenueThe Arms and Armor Court, Gallery 371 A line of mounted figures in full steel, horses armored too, is the moment the whole route gets loud. Among them is a German armor for man and horse dated 1548, from Nuremberg: the man's suit weighs about 56 pounds and the horse armor with saddle about 92.…0
  7. 7Bisj PoleBisj PoleAsmat bisj poles in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Gallery 350 The wing for the arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas and Oceania reopened on May 31, 2025, after a renovation that kept it closed from 2021, so even regular visitors have something new here. Head for the Asmat gallery, where carved…0
  8. 8New York KourosNew York KourosGallery 154 Walk into the Greek and Roman wing and this marble youth from around 590 to 580 BCE stares straight past you, fists clenched and left foot forward, a little over 6 feet tall. He was carved in Attica from Naxian marble, and his stiff, striding pose invites a comparison with the Egyptian…0
  9. 9Wheat Field with CypressesWheat Field with CypressesThe Met's 1889 version, Gallery 822 Upstairs in the 19th-century European galleries, Van Gogh's cypress flickers up the canvas like a dark flame over gold wheat and swirling clouds. He painted it outdoors near Saint-Rémy in the summer of 1889, a year before his death, and the paint is thick enough…0
  10. 10The Death of SocratesThe Death of SocratesGallery 634 Jacques Louis David painted this in 1787, two years before the French Revolution, and it plays like a stage set: Socrates, sentenced to death, keeps lecturing as he reaches for the cup of hemlock while his followers fall apart around him. Every gesture is crisp and readable from across…0