Metropolitan Museum of Art opens

On February 20, 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors to the public for the first time. Founded just two years earlier by a group of New York philanthropists, artists, and businessmen who wanted a national art institution to rival those of Europe, the Met had no permanent home of its own.

Its first galleries were rented rooms in the Dodworth Building at 681 Fifth Avenue, secured on a one-year lease. The fledgling collection’s nucleus came largely from three private European collections — some 174 paintings — supplemented by loans and gifts.

The museum that began in borrowed rooms now holds more than two million works.

The Met soon outgrew that space and moved twice before settling, in 1880, into the Central Park building it still occupies and has expanded ever since. Today it ranks among the largest and most visited art museums on Earth, a long way from a single rented floor on Fifth Avenue.