JOIN US HERE

  ne of the finest features of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is also one of its best-kept secrets: an unparalleled collection of musical instruments.

The collection holds 5000 ancient and modern instruments from around the world. An audio guide is available to provide music examples and to explain the instruments’ functionality, symbolism, decoration, and technology. Collection highlights include the world’s oldest surviving piano, a magnificent Appleton pipe organ, exquisitely decorated Baroque and Renaissance instruments, and guitars that belonged to Andrés Segovia.

Want a preview? See descriptions and high-resolution images of 100 featured instruments online (www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/musical_instruments).

The department offers a variety of free concerts and lecture-demonstrations throughout the year. In addition, the Sunday at the Met series offers theme-based lectures and performances (no reservations, free with admission; visit www.metmuseum.org/events/lectures).

Conclude your visit by enjoying the museum’s numerous artworks depicting music, such as Laurent de La Hyre’s Allegory of Music (1649). La Hyre portrays a Muse tuning a theorbo with a songbird at her shoulder. Contrasting manifestations of music emerge: nature (the bird), artifice (instruments), the sacred (the organ), and merriment (the foreground instruments and songbook). The Muse at once bears the attributes of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of sacred music, and the French courtesan, who embodied secular musical entertainment among the Renaissance nobility.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York City; suggested admission: $20 adults, $10 students.