The Metropolitan Museum of Art was incorporated on this day in New York in 1870. Wealthy Americans in Paris reached out to a social club in NYC that was able to scrounge up the cash needed to get the museum going. The city agreed to incorporate the museum, but only if it was open to the public year-round at no cost.
Its first object, a Roman sarcophagus, arrived the next year. Five years later, it acquired a ton of pieces from a collection of art from Cyprus, the island nation in the Mediterranean Sea. It wasn’t until 1880, though, that it moved to its iconic location just off Central Park. It now hosts some of the largest collections of European and antique art and is one of the most visited museums on the planet.
You can read more about the Met’s history on its website.
