Since its founding at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has accumulated one of the world’s leading art collections with 240,000 works spanning 4,000 years of human creativity. The museum primarily serves a ten-county metro area with six million residents and receives some 700,000 visitors every year. To serve those visitors, the museum presents sixteen to twenty special exhibitions and creates educational programs—designed to fit learners of all ages—for more than 200,000 participants annually.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online. Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

As part of its encyclopedic holdings, the Museum’s collection of Medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum’s branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-Medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Mission Statement:

The Met was founded on April 13, 1870, “to be located in the City of New York, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said city a Museum and library of art, of encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts, and the application of arts to manufacture and practical life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and, to that end, of furnishing popular instruction.” This statement of purpose has guided the Museum for over 140 years.

On January 13, 2015, the Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art reaffirmed this statement of purpose and supplemented it with the following statement of mission:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.

New York City Ballet (NYCB) is one of the foremost dance companies in the world, with a roster of more than 90 dancers and an unparalleled repertory of modern masterpieces.

NYCB was founded in 1948 by the legendary choreographer George Balanchine and arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, and quickly became world renowned for its contemporary style and a repertory of original ballets that has forever changed the face of classical dance. In 1949 Jerome Robbins joined the Company as Associate Director and together with Balanchine created a vast and varied repertory that grew each season. From 1983 until his retirement in 2017, Peter Martins was the Company’s Ballet Master in Chief. In 2009 Katherine Brown was named NYCB’s first-ever Executive Director, a position created to oversee the administrative management of the Company and its long-time home, the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. In February 2019, NYCB named Jonathan Stafford Artistic Director and Wendy Whelan Associate Artistic Director. 

The Company performs a 21-week season in New York City each year, in addition to annual week-long seasons at its summer home at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York and at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Widely acknowledged for its enduring contributions to dance, NYCB is committed to promoting creative excellence and nurturing a new generation of dancers and choreographers. Each season the Company presents new work by contemporary artists and commissions anywhere from four to eight ballets. In addition to its performance season, NYCB also offers a wide range of educational and public programming for people of all ages and abilities.