| |  | Set up your studio at The Met. Copyists have created reinterpretations of original artworks in The Met collection since 1872, and for the first time this year, we're expanding our program and accepting applications for a copyist at The Met Cloisters.
The program celebrates intensive technical study, deep observation, and encourages sustained engagement with a diverse range of media, including, but not limited to, drawing, painting, and sculpture.
Application deadline: Friday, July 31, 2026, 11:59 pm ET
Learn more and apply now → |  | | Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas | Through October 18, 2026
Gallery 001, Gallery 010, and Gallery 016
Set in the evocative atmosphere of The Met Cloisters, Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas sheds light on a selection of works created on either side of the Atlantic Ocean between 500 and 1500 CE. The exhibition's exploration of hybrid creatures deepens our understanding of their apparent necessity among diverse peoples. In the Americas, a complex gold pendant by a Tairona artist of northern Colombia, depicting a confrontational figure with hands on hips, a crocodile-like head, and an enormous headdress, would have reflected and expressed the wearer's status and power. In Europe, ferocious dragons such as the one depicted on a monumental fresco from the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, Spain, took center stage to convey a multiplicity of meanings both sacred and profane.
Learn more → |  | | Facsimiles at The Cloisters Library and Archives | It's understandable that visitors would imagine that the holdings of The Cloisters Library and Archives include the kinds of rare, illuminated manuscripts that dazzle museum visitors in our galleries. But those treasures are guarded and overseen in the same manner as the paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts found in The Met collection. For the most part, The Cloisters Library and Archives hosts research materials from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
What we can offer in terms of rare, if not entirely singular items, is a solid collection of facsimiles—very high-quality reproductions—of medieval illuminated books of hours, herbals, and other works originally produced on parchment or paper.
Learn more → | | | | Accessibility at The Met
The Met is committed to accessibility for all. For information about accessibility, programs, and services for people with disabilities at both Met sites, visit metmuseum.org/access. To request an access accommodation for virtual programs or online resources, email [email protected], or call 212-650-2010. For information about accessibility on our website, see our Website Accessibility Statement. | Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas is made possible by the Michel David-Weill Fund.
Public programs at The Met Cloisters are made possible in part by The Helen Clay Frick Foundation.
For Education program funders, visit metmuseum.org/educationfundingsupport.
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Images: Tairona artist(s), Figure Pendant, Colombia, 900-1600 CE. Gold. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jan Mitchell and Sons Collection, Gift of Jan Mitchell, 1991 (1991.419.31) | Taccuino di disegni di Giovannino de' Grassi ([Modena]: Il Bulino edizioni d'arte, 1998). Photo by Michael Carter | All other photos by Filip Wolak | | | |
