The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art began with a dinner party in Paris on July 4, 1866. During the celebration, a group of prominent Americans, led by lawyer John Jay, proposed the creation of a national institution to bring art education to the public. They wanted to provide Americans with a cultural landmark that could compete with the great museums of Europe. By 1870, the museum was officially incorporated in New York City, launching a journey that would transform a modest collection of 174 paintings and a single Roman sarcophagus into an encyclopedic archive of over one and a half million objects.