On Monday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reopened its wing dedicated to artists from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, after five years of renovation work, which included halls and lighting, at a cost of $150 million.
The museum is re-displaying more than 700 works by artists, including Vermeer, Rembrandt, Goya and El Greco, on the walls of 45 halls as part of the exhibition “Look Again: European Paintings 1300-1800.”
The Metropolitan Museum, one of the richest museums in the world thanks to the money of wealthy donors, has one of the largest collections of European paintings, according to its director, Austrian art historian Max Hollein.
But the renovation process was necessary, especially because the Metropolitan Museum has witnessed a decline in the number of visitors since 2019.
As part of this process, all the halls with skylights were painted, their lighting was replaced, and they were reorganized according to chronological order.
The old skylights were also replaced, according to the museum, which indicated that this led to “improving the quality of light” and “enhancing the experience of looking at the paintings.”
