Plan Ahead

Visiting Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty or Van Gogh’s Cypresses?

Read the additional visitor guidelines

Materials

Learn how our conservation and scientific research departments innovate to study the materials in the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Celebrate the Year of the Rabbit with Chinese Calligraphy

Grab your brush and ink and give calligraphy a try to commemorate the Lunar New Year!

Collage in blue and orange tones depicting flowers, mugs and a few other abstract shapes

Feminine/Masculine: The Collages of Picasso, Braque, and Gris

How did Cubist artists use collage to probe the relationship between the sexes?

The Bechers in Ohio, 1987

Watch a silent film of the photographer couple, Bernd and Hilla Becher, on a road trip through the American heartland.

Irving Penn's "The Tarot Reader (Bridget Tichenor and Jean Patchett), New York" with two women in stylist black clothing reading tarot cards with a diagram of a hand behind them

Immaterial: The Tarot Reader

“At first glance, this Irving Penn photo looks like it could be its own tarot card.”
A metallic black and gold texture

Immaterial: Metals, Part Two

Let’s talk about the metals that break the rules.
A close up detail of a highly reflective gilded and enameled cup adorned with floral motives set within geometric patterns.

Electrolytic Etching

A process that eats into designated areas of a material's surface through the application of acids or an electrical current.
A detailed view of a patinated copper and silver chocolate pot. A lobster rendered in high-relief silver adorns the  flat circular plane of the pot’s body.

Patinating Copper

A process by which chemicals are used to purposefully induce the formation of a thin colored layer on the surface of metal, referred to as chemical patination.
A close up view of silver, blue, and maroon cylindrical cup. The surface of the cup is reflective and is adorned with an inlay design of a checkerboard pattern of wavy triangle shapes.

Electrolytic Inlay

A decorative technique that uses an electric current to deposit metal particles from an electrolytic solution into designated recesses on a metal object.
Close up detail of a black iron candlestick with floral designs modeled in low relief on the surface and surfaced in a variety of silver-, gold-, and copper-toned metals.

Damascening

To produce a design or pattern by inlaying a softer metal into a harder one — often gold, silver, or copper into a darkened steel background.
A close up detail of a silver teapot adorned with a symmetrical design of abstract floral motifs rendered in maroon, orange, taupe, and turquoise enamel.

Champlevé Enameling

A decorative technique that fuses a powdered glassy material into a recess in a metal surface through the application of heat.
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