The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met Fifth Avenue) is an encyclopedia of art and culture that covers 5,000 years of human history. Fashionistas love the Costume Institute. The Met Gala is one of America’s most important fashion moments. Met Rooftop installations offer great views and a snack bar. The Met Cloisters houses a collection of medieval European art, architecture, and gardens in Upper Manhattan. Met Expert Talks and Met Expert Talks en Español greatly enhance your visit.
Latin Culture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
MAY
African, Indigenous American, & Oceanic Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art reopens its spectacularly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing with over 1,700 objects of both ancient and contemporary African, Indigenous American (the Americas), and Oceanic art; in the big windowed hall facing Central Park, on Saturday, May 31, 2025. The collection is based on Nelson A. Rockefeller’s pre-Columbian and African collection and includes many works that are iconic in their traditions. Highlights include new acquisitions of African art, the first major American exhibition of ancient Andean textiles, and new Oceanic commissions. It’s all beautifully presented with lots of natural light and the latest scholarship which moves beyond colonial narratives. Included with admission. 🇧🇯 🇨🇲 🇨🇴 🇨🇩 🇪🇨 🇪🇹 🇬🇦 🇲🇱 🇲🇽 🇳🇬 🇵🇪 🇸🇳
The entrance to the wing places you in Africa which makes sense because the entire human race originated in Africa. The exhibition is of art from many countries including: Beninese, Cameroonian, Colombian, Congolese, Ecuadorian, Ethiopian, Gabonese, Malian, Mexican, Nigerian, Peruvian, and Senegalese art. Every culture has its own unique style and traditions, but if you take a step back, you can’t help but notice the similarities in pre-industrial cultural expression. Without being an expert, it can be hard to place some works in an Oceanic, Indigenous American, or African context. Human beings do similar things around the world and across time ~ because we are all human.
This type of art used to be called “primitive art,” but there is nothing primitive about the art or the people who made it. It’s just not European. Yet a lot of this art influenced European modern art traditions, and in the recent moment of being more open to world cultures, it is influencing contemporary art today. The South Seas Ceremonial House Ceiling from Papua New Guinea is spectacular. You don’t just see it, you can feel its presence.
A point of context for ancient art is that while European modern and contemporary art is purely decorative, ancient art is often a vessel for spiritual energy. So visiting this Wing is not just a visual experience, it can be a spiritual experience. Let it happen.
Whether you visit the exhibition to see some art or connect with your ancestors, your visit will be a memorable journey into our common humanity.
Senegalese Contemporary Art
Iba Ndiaye: Between Latitude and Longitude is the inaugural exhibition of “Tabaski III,” a major work about Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, an important Islamic festival commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son in obedience to God. Respecting Abraham’s faith, God substituted a ram at the last moment. The exhibition connects Ndiaye’s West African traditions with European, African, and Islamic art in the Museum’s collection. It’s at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; from May 31, 2025 – May 31, 2025. Free with admission. 🇸🇳
Iba Ndiaye was a Senegalese modern artist (1928-2008) who set up Senegal’s national school of fine arts. Senegal is the northernmost country in West Africa. It is part of the Sahel, the transition zone from the Sahara Desert to the grasslands and forests of Sub-saharan Africa, so it has a strong Islamic influence. Senegal is famous for its artists and musicians.
African Diasporic Fashion Gala
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, a Met Fashion Institute exhibition of three-hundred years of Black dandy men’s fashion, opens with the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; on Monday, May 5, 2025, and runs through October 26, 2025. Free with admission. #SuperfineStyle
Dressing is a form of personal branding in all cultures and social classes. How you dress says a lot about who you are both as an individual and in your broader social context. New York is the secret African city and New Yorkers are some of the best dressed people on the planet. Mother Afrika has many great pattern traditions, and both Indigenous African and Islamic African styles of dress whose influences show in this intersection of Black and European style. The exhibition also shows how contemporary Black style influences the entire world of fashion, especially in youth culture.
NOVEMBER
Black Artists and Ancient Egypt
Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1875-Now examines how Black cultural figures have engaged with ancient Egypt, from the 1800s, to the Harlem Renaissance, to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-1970s, to now; at the Met Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; from November 17, 2024 to February 17, 2025. metmuseum.org 🇪🇬
#FlightintoEgypt
OCTOBER
Italian Art
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 examines the influence of Sienese artists (a town outside of Florence) on Italian Renaissance painting; at the Met Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from October 13, 2024 to January 26, 2025. metmuseum.org 🇮🇹
SEPTEMBER
Fashion Art
“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” is an immersive exhibition that connects four centuries of fashion with the natural cycles of death and rebirth; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park; from May 10 – September 2, 2024. $30 (NY state residents pay-what-you-wish). metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
Met Expert Talks en Español
Maria G. Mieites Alonso, Responsable de Laboratorio, The Met, habla sobre “La magia de colorantes naturales en la Edad Media.” En esta charla, descubra las diferentes plantas (¡e insectos!) utilizados como colorantes naturales en tiempos medievales para crear algunos de los tapices más emblemáticos de la Colección de The Met, como el tapiz del Rey Arturo (metmuseum.org). En el Met Cloisters en Fort Tryon Park en el Alto Manhattan; en el Domingo, 1 de septiembre de 2024, desde 2-3pm. Incluido con la entrada. Consigue tus entradas en metmuseum.org 🇪🇸
Mexican Art
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard examines Mexico’s printmaking traditions from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, including Posada who printed “La Calavera Catrina” that inspired the renewal of Mexico’s Day of the Dead traditions,” at the Met Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from September 12, 2024 – January 5, 2025. metmuseum.org 🇲🇽
African American Art
Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson (1922-2015) is a retrospective of the artist’s practice of creating positive representations of the Black American experience when they weren’t many in popular culture or museums; at the Met Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from September 20, 2025 to February 8, 2026. metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
French Art
Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin (1724-1780) examines the draftsman’s unconventional drawings of everyday life in 1700s Paris; at the Met Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from September 26, 2024 to February 4, 2025. metmuseum.org 🇫🇷
ONGOING LATIN CULTURE EXHIBITIONS
“Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection” shows the diversity, complexity, and influence of Native American art from over fifty Indigenous groups is ongoing. metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
“Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room” builds an African Diaspora past-present-future narrative around a reimagined room in Seneca Village, the African American neighborhood displaced to build Central Park. The exhibition is ongoing. metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
PAST LATIN CULTURE EXHIBITIONS
Fashion Art
“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” is an immersive exhibition that connects four centuries of fashion with the natural cycles of death and rebirth; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park; from May 10 – September 2, 2024. $30 (NY state residents pay-what-you-wish). metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
African American Art
“The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” shows how after the Great Migration from the South, led to the Harlem Renaissance in Black Arts which influenced the international modern art movement; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park; from February 25 – July 28, 2024. $30 (NY state residents pay-what-you-wish). metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
Native American Art
“Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” is an exhibition curated by Native American communities that shows how Pueblo and Hopi pottery was itself an expression of community; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park: from July 13, 2023 – June 4, 2024; $30 (NY state residents pay-what-you-wish). metmuseum.org 🇺🇸
African Art
“Africa & Byzantium” shows the cultural connections between medieval Africa and Byzantium, the eastern Rome in what is now Türkiye, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park; from November 19, 2023 – March 3, 2024. $30 (NY state residents pay-what-you-wish). metmuseum.org 🇪🇬 🇪🇹
Puerto Rican Art
“Victorian Masterpieces from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico” is a special installation of five European masterpieces from the Ponce collection, including Frederic Leighton’s “Flaming June;” while the museum in Ponce is repaired after the 2020 earthquakes that shook southwestern Puerto Rico. Through February 2024. metmuseum.org 🇵🇷
“The African Origin of Civilization compares West African, Central African and Egyptian art to show how human civilization began in Africa, from Dec 14, 2021 through January 19, 2025. metmuseum.org 🇧🇯 🇨🇩 🇪🇬 🇨🇮 🇬🇭 🇲🇱 🇬🇳 🇳🇬 🇸🇸
About the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 and moved to its main location in Central Park on the Upper East Side in 1880. The Met Fifth Avenue has a Beaux-Arts facade in front of over two million square feet of museum.
The Met is an art museum, but it’s really a museum of human culture that tells the story of all of us. It is doing great work showing how African Diaspora and Indigenous culture are vital parts of our American culture and also influence the world. Thank you!
Latin Collections Online
The Met Museum puts many images and a lot of art history online, including works that are iconic in their categories. You can easily spend days visiting the museum, or the website. Either is time well spent.
- African Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing contains many African masks and ceremonial objects.
- Ancient American Art in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing contains Indigenous art of the Americas.
- Arms and Armor displays European armor.
- The Costume Institute turns fashion into art.
- Egyptian Art displays ancient art from Egypt.
- European Sculpture and Decorative Arts displays large-scale European sculptures and some decorative arts from Latin America.
- Greek and Roman Art contains art from Italy and from the height of the Roman expansion around the Mediterranean.
- Medieval Art surveys European art from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. There is more medieval art at the Met Cloisters in Upper Manhattan.
- Modern and Contemporary Art displays masterworks from when Paris was the global center of art.
- Oceanic Art in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing contains Indigenous art of the Pacific.
- Robert Lehman Collection contains European art and decorative objects including Italian Maiolica glass.
View online collections at metmuseum.org
Social Media
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Metropolitan Museum of Art Tickets
Tickets are good for same day admission to the Met Fifth Avenue and Met Cloisters. New Yorkers can pay what you wish.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
(at 82nd St)
Upper East Side, Manhattan