No other museum covers the history of humanity and its achievements as thoroughly as The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 24 half-hour lectures, illustrated with more than 400 works of art, Professor Richard Brettell introduces you to virtually every department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each department is a museum unto its own, representing one of the world’s finest collections in its field. The first floor alone houses Greek and Roman Art; Egyptian Art; Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; Arms and Armor; European Sculpture and Decorative Arts; Modern Art; and the Robert Lehman Collection. The course is truly a user-friendly guide to a mammoth institution that has amassed astonishing treasures.
Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Go on a trip to one of the world’s great art museums without leaving the comfort of your own home, with this brilliant and spellbinding tour of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
01: The Making of the Museum
Using maps, charts, photographs, paintings, and prints, this lecture provides a historical portrait of New York City and the circumstances that spawned its greatest museum.
32 min
02: The Art of Ancient Greece and Rome
We begin our tour of The Metropolitan in the Classical collection, which occupies large spaces of a grandeur suited to Greco-Roman art.
32 min
03: Ancient Egyptian Art
The Egyptian collection ranges from entire tombs and temples to tiny objects of gold, glass, and ceramic, with particularly rich holdings in "the art of the afterlife."
30 min
04: Asian Art
These galleries contain masterpieces from Tibet, India, Cambodia, Korea, China, and Japan. Especially notable is the Astor Court, which is modeled on a Ming dynasty scholar's courtyard.
32 min
05: The Ancient Near East and Islamic Art
Extending from Bronze Age objects to a glorious room from an Islamic palace, these collections show the mastery of glass, ceramic, stone carving, and bronze in successive urban cultures.
30 min
06: European Painting I—The Renaissance
The Metropolitan is famous for its Department of European Painting. We investigate the development of figural illusionism in works by Giotto, Fra Angelico, and others.
29 min
07: European Painting II—16th–17th Centuries
Covering the High Renaissance and the extraordinary profusion of painting in Europe for the next two centuries, this lecture includes works by Raphael, Vermeer, El Greco, Velázquez, and Rembrandt.
31 min
08: European Painting III—18th Century
Works examined include Italian paintings by Tiepolo and Canelletto, French Rococo oils by Watteau and Boucher, and British portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough.
32 min
09: European Painting IV—19th Century
The Metropolitan has perhaps the most balanced collection of French painting from 1830 to 1900 in any universal art museum. We look at works by Monet, Cézanne, and Gauguin, among others.
32 min
10: Drawings and Prints
We sample some of the more than 1.5 million objects in the Department of Drawings and Prints, which includes the entire range of drawing styles and materials from the Late Middle Ages to the present.
31 min
11: Photographs
Photography, the most pervasive of modern media, is well represented at The Metropolitan, with a collection extending back to the earliest experiments in the early 19th century.
31 min
12: European Decorative Arts
In an exercise of time travel, we visit luxuriously appointed period rooms representing high European culture from an Italian Renaissance "studiola" to an 18th-century Parisian grand salon.
31 min
13: European Sculpture
The Metropolitan's European sculpture collection includes Renaissance works in stone, bronze, and terra-cotta, and masterpieces by artists such as Bernini and Canova.
31 min
14: The Arts of Africa and Oceania
The intricately crafted objects in this lecture include a feather box, a ceremonial shield, and a painted wooden skull rack from Oceania, as well as powerful masks and sculpted figures from Africa.
31 min
15: The Ancient New World
We survey a collection of materials from the rich cultures of the Americas before European colonization, the most comprehensive display of ancient New World Art in any universal art museum.
31 min
16: Musical Instruments and Arms and Armor
This lecture looks at major masterpieces in the arts of making music and war. The Departments of Musical Instruments and Arms and Armor both feature stunning examples from the histories of their fields.
30 min
17: Costumes and Textiles
New York's preeminence as a fashion center led The Metropolitan to create the Costume Institute and the Antonio Ratti Textile Center to study collections of historical fashions and fabrics.
32 min
18: American Art 1650–1865
Starting in period rooms from the colonial era, we explore the development of a distinctive American art up to the Civil War through works by Revere, Stuart, Copley, Hicks, Cole, Church, and others.
32 min
19: American Art 1865–1900
America entered an industrial boom after the Civil War that created a new demand for art in a wide range of genres. We sample pieces by Tiffany, Saint-Gaudens, Eakins, and Sargent, among others.
31 min
20: 20th-Century Art—Before World War II
The Metropolitan's encyclopedic holdings allow comparisons between its 20th-century collection and its other works - for example, a Brancusi sculpture and an archaic Greek figure.
30 min
21: 20th-Century Art—After World War II
We explore The Metropolitan's post World War II art, including abstract expressionists such as Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and David Smith, as well as Pop, Op, and other movements.
31 min
22: The Robert Lehman Collection 1400–1800
A remarkable private collection kept intact after its donation to The Metropolitan, the Lehman Collection is rich in old master paintings and drawings. We sample its holdings up to 1800.
31 min
23: The Robert Lehman Collection 1800–1960
The Lehman Collection has important works from the 19th and 20th centuries. We examine paintings by Ingres, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Derain, Bonnard, and Balthus, as well as works on paper.
31 min
24: The People of the Museum
The Metropolitan has been built by farsighted directors and generous donors. We look at some of the most remarkable of these.
35 min
Overview Course No. 7510
About
Richard Brettell (1949–2020) was the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Professor of Art and Aesthetics at The University of Texas at Dallas. He earned his BA, MA, and PhD from Yale University. Prior to joining The University of Texas at Dallas, Professor Brettell taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and Harvard University. Professor Brettell was the founding American director of the French Regional and American Museum Exchange, designed to promote the exchange of art and information between regional museums in France and the United States. He served as the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art and advised and consulted for museums such as the Portland Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. His museum exhibition work included Monet in Normandy (for the de Young Museum in San Francisco) and The Impressionist in the City: Pissarro’s Series (for the Dallas Museum of Art). He gave scholarly lectures at numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, and he wrote more than 25 books, including Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection and Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860–1890.
