Metropolitan Museum of Art presents with pride this synoptic guide to its vast encyclopedic collections and to its buildings, including The Cloisters. Many years in the making, this guide illustrates and describes nearly nine hundred works of art from the Museum's eighteen curatorial departments. The objects for the guide were selected in order to provide a balanced overall view of the Metropolitan's collections and a generous selection of its many masterpieces. The works of art herein have been described by the largest art-history faculty in the New World-the curators of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.