The Met by theme
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's official profile, with the collection sorted into themed boards instead of galleries.
What it is
The official Pinterest profile of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Met describes its collection as 5,000 years of art from around the globe, and here it's sorted by idea instead of by gallery: roughly forty boards and more than 11,000 pins. Flowers, masks, lettering, animals, weddings, even mustaches — each theme gets a board that pulls objects from different centuries and continents.
Why we picked it
A museum map tells you where things hang. The Met's Pinterest tells you how one motif changed across time. Flower Power puts Japanese prints beside European still lifes, Marvelous Masks mixes ritual and theatrical pieces, and Letter Love is all about type and hand lettering in old prints and posters. That kind of cross-section is hard to build yourself, even with the museum's own online collection.
Some boards run to hundreds of pins. Works on Paper holds more than 450 drawings and prints, Sculptural Splendor covers sculpture, and Medieval Marvels draws on The Met Cloisters and the medieval department. Bookworm gathers covers, pages and marbled papers from the museum's Watson Library, while From the Archives shows the building and its galleries decades ago. The biggest board, Fashion Inspo, is close to 2,000 pins.
Where to start
- Works on Paper — drawings and prints for anyone studying line, composition or printmaking.
- Bookworm — covers and marbled papers, a ready-made moodboard for book design or bookbinding.
- Fashion Inspo — dress from antiquity onward, handy for costume and period styling.
- Wicked Works — witches, skulls and ghosts from the collection when you need something gothic.
- Met Miniatures — tiny objects that are easy to walk past in the galleries.
Who it's for
Illustrators, designers and art students who need art history references. Teachers pulling together visuals for a lesson. And anyone who loves the Met but can't get to New York soon — an evening on these boards covers more ground than a day on your feet.
Quick answers
Do I need a Pinterest account? No, you can browse the boards without one, though Pinterest may prompt you to log in after a while. An account is only needed to save pins.
Is this the museum's official profile? Yes. It's run by The Met and links to metmuseum.org.
Can I find out more about an object? Most pins link through to the object's page in the Met's online collection; some go to the museum library's digital collections.