Located in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art - also known as the Met - houses a vast variety of artistic treasures from a many different time periods and countries. The museum is more than 2,000,000 square feet in size, and hosts more than 5 million visitors every year. It is the largest art museum in the United States, and the fourth largest in the world.
Established in 1872, the Met was created "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations."
The Met is located at the upper edge of Central Park in New York City, and contains over two million works of art divided among seventeen different collections. This includes ancient art, such as that from ancient Egypt and Sumeria, as well as iconography and religious statues from medieval Europe, in addition to works of art from luminaries such as Caravaggio, Rembrant, and El Greco.
The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler has caused such interest in the Metropolitan Museum that the museum devoted an entire issue of their children's magazine to it in 2001. This edition of the magazine provided the history and background of the art objects that Claudia and Jamie encountered on their adventure.
Visitors can pay whatever they like to enter the museum (a "pay what you wish" model), although a $25 contribution is suggested.
